bitcoin/doc/build-freebsd.md

FreeBSD Build Guide

Updated for FreeBSD 14.0

This guide describes how to build bitcoind, command-line utilities, and GUI on FreeBSD.

Preparation

1. Install Required Dependencies

Run the following as root to install the base dependencies for building.

pkg install autoconf automake boost-libs git gmake libevent libtool pkgconf

See dependencies.md for a complete overview.

2. Clone Bitcoin Repo

Now that git and all the required dependencies are installed, let's clone the Bitcoin Core repository to a directory. All build scripts and commands will run from this directory.

git clone https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git

3. Install Optional Dependencies

Wallet Dependencies

It is not necessary to build wallet functionality to run either bitcoind or bitcoin-qt.

Descriptor Wallet Support

sqlite3 is required to support descriptor wallets. Skip if you don't intend to use descriptor wallets.

pkg install sqlite3

Legacy Wallet Support

BerkeleyDB is only required if legacy wallet support is required.

It is required to use Berkeley DB 4.8. You cannot use the BerkeleyDB library from ports. However, you can build DB 4.8 yourself using depends.

gmake -C depends NO_BOOST=1 NO_LIBEVENT=1 NO_QT=1 NO_SQLITE=1 NO_NATPMP=1 NO_UPNP=1 NO_ZMQ=1 NO_USDT=1

When the build is complete, the Berkeley DB installation location will be displayed:

to: /path/to/bitcoin/depends/x86_64-unknown-freebsd[release-number]

Finally, set BDB_PREFIX to this path according to your shell:

csh: setenv BDB_PREFIX [path displayed above]

sh/bash: export BDB_PREFIX=[path displayed above]

GUI Dependencies

Qt5

Bitcoin Core includes a GUI built with the cross-platform Qt Framework. To compile the GUI, we need to install the necessary parts of Qt. Skip if you don't intend to use the GUI.

pkg install qt5-buildtools qt5-core qt5-gui qt5-linguisttools qt5-testlib qt5-widgets

libqrencode

The GUI can encode addresses in a QR Code. To build in QR support for the GUI, install libqrencode. Skip if not using the GUI or don't want QR code functionality.

pkg install libqrencode

---

Notifications

ZeroMQ

Bitcoin Core can provide notifications via ZeroMQ. If the package is installed, support will be compiled in.

pkg install libzmq4

Test Suite Dependencies

There is an included test suite that is useful for testing code changes when developing. To run the test suite (recommended), you will need to have Python 3 installed:

pkg install python3 databases/py-sqlite3

---

Building Bitcoin Core

1. Configuration

There are many ways to configure Bitcoin Core, here are a few common examples:

Descriptor Wallet and GUI:

This explicitly enables the GUI and disables legacy wallet support, assuming sqlite and qt are installed.

./autogen.sh
./configure --without-bdb --with-gui=yes MAKE=gmake

Descriptor & Legacy Wallet. No GUI:

This enables support for both wallet types and disables the GUI, assuming sqlite3 and db4 are both installed.

./autogen.sh
./configure --with-gui=no \
    BDB_LIBS="-L${BDB_PREFIX}/lib -ldb_cxx-4.8" \
    BDB_CFLAGS="-I${BDB_PREFIX}/include" \
    MAKE=gmake

No Wallet or GUI

./autogen.sh
./configure --without-wallet --with-gui=no MAKE=gmake

2. Compile

Important: Use gmake (the non-GNU make will exit with an error).

gmake # use "-j N" for N parallel jobs
gmake check # Run tests if Python 3 is available