lightning/doc/INSTALL.md

Table of Contents

1. Library Requirements
2. Ubuntu
3. Fedora
4. FreeBSD
5. NixOS
6. macOS
7. Android
8. Raspberry Pi
9. Armbian
10. Additional steps

Library Requirements

You will need several development libraries:

• libsqlite3: for database support.
• libgmp: for secp256k1
• zlib: for compression routines.

For actually doing development and running the tests, you will also need:

• pip3: to install python-bitcoinlib
• asciidoc: for formatting the man pages (if you change them)
• valgrind: for extra debugging checks

You will also need a version of bitcoind with segregated witness and estimatesmartfee economical node, such as the 0.15 or above.

To Build on Ubuntu

OS version: Ubuntu 15.10 or above

Get dependencies:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y \
  autoconf automake build-essential git libtool libgmp-dev \
  libsqlite3-dev python python3 net-tools zlib1g-dev

If you don't have Bitcoin installed locally you'll need to install that as well:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bitcoin/bitcoin
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y bitcoind

For development or running tests, get additional dependencies:

sudo apt-get install -y asciidoc valgrind python3-pip
sudo pip3 install -r tests/requirements.txt

Clone lightning:

git clone https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning.git
cd lightning

Build lightning:

./configure
make

Running lightning:

bitcoind &
./lightningd/lightningd &
./cli/lightning-cli help

Note: You may need to include testnet=1 in bitcoin.conf

To Build on Fedora

OS version: Fedora 27 or above

Get dependencies:

$ sudo dnf update -y && \
        sudo dnf groupinstall -y \
                'C Development Tools and Libraries' \
                'Development Tools' && \
        sudo dnf install -y \
                asciidoc \
                clang \
                gmp-devel \
                libsq3-devel \
                python2-devel \
                python3-devel \
                python3-pip \
                python3-setuptools \
                net-tools \
                net-tools \
                valgrind \
                wget \
                zlib-devel && \
        sudo dnf clean all

Make sure you have bitcoind available to run

Clone lightning:

$ git clone https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning.git
$ cd lightning

Build and install lightning:

$lightning> ./configure
$lightning> make
$lightning> sudo make install

Running lightning (mainnet):

$ bitcoind &
$ lightningd --network=bitcoin

Running lightning on testnet:

$ bitcoind -testnet &
$ lightningd --network=testnet

To Build on FreeBSD

OS version: FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE or above

Get dependencies:

# pkg install -y \
  autoconf automake git gmp asciidoc gmake libtool python python3 sqlite3

If you don't have Bitcoin installed locally you'll need to install that as well:

# pkg install -y bitcoin-daemon bitcoin-utils

Clone lightning:

$ git clone https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning.git
$ cd lightning

Build lightning:

$ ./configure
$ gmake
$ gmake install

Running lightning:

Note: Edit your /usr/local/etc/bitcoin.conf to include rpcuser=<foo> and rpcpassword=<bar> first, you may also need to include testnet=1

# service bitcoind start
$ ./lightningd/lightningd &
$ ./cli/lightning-cli help

To Build on NixOS

Use nix-shell launch a shell with a full clightning dev environment:

$ nix-shell -Q -p gdb sqlite autoconf git clang libtool gmp sqlite autoconf \
autogen automake 'python3.withPackages (p: [p.bitcoinlib])' \
valgrind asciidoc --run make

To Build on macOS

Assuming you have Xcode and Homebrew installed. Install dependencies:

$ brew install autoconf automake libtool python3 gmp gnu-sed

If you don't have bitcoind installed locally you'll need to install that as well:

$ brew install berkeley-db4 boost miniupnpc openssl pkg-config libevent
$ git clone https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin
$ cd bitcoin
$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure
$ make src/bitcoind src/bitcoin-cli && make install

Clone lightning:

$ git clone https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning.git
$ cd lightning

Build lightning:

$ ./configure
$ make

Running lightning:

Note: Edit your ~/Library/Application\ Support/Bitcoin/bitcoin.conf to include rpcuser=<foo> and rpcpassword=<bar> first, you may also need to include testnet=1

bitcoind &
./lightningd/lightningd &
./cli/lightning-cli help

To cross-compile for Android

Make a standalone toolchain as per https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/standalone_toolchain.html. For c-lightning you must target an API level of 24 or higher.

Depending on your toolchain location and target arch, source env variables such as:

export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/android/toolchain/bin
# Change next line depending on target device arch
target_host=arm-linux-androideabi
export AR=$target_host-ar
export AS=$target_host-clang
export CC=$target_host-clang
export CXX=$target_host-clang++
export LD=$target_host-ld
export STRIP=$target_host-strip

Two makefile targets should not be cross-compiled so we specify a native CC:

make CC=clang clean ccan/tools/configurator/configurator
make clean -C ccan/ccan/cdump/tools \
  && make CC=clang -C ccan/ccan/cdump/tools

Install the qemu-user package. This will allow you to properly configure the build for the target device environment. Build with:

BUILD=x86_64 MAKE_HOST=arm-linux-androideabi \
  make PIE=1 DEVELOPER=0 \
  CONFIGURATOR_CC="arm-linux-androideabi-clang -static"

To cross-compile for Raspberry Pi

Obtain the official Raspberry Pi toolchains. This document assumes compilation will occur towards the Raspberry Pi 3 (arm-linux-gnueabihf as of Mar. 2018).

Depending on your toolchain location and target arch, source env variables will need to be set. They can be set from the command line as such:

export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/arm-linux-gnueabihf/bin
# Change next line depending on specific Raspberry Pi device
target_host=arm-linux-gnueabihf
export AR=$target_host-ar
export AS=$target_host-as
export CC=$target_host-gcc
export CXX=$target_host-g++
export LD=$target_host-ld
export STRIP=$target_host-strip

Install the qemu-user package. This will allow you to properly configure the build for the target device environment. Config the arm elf interpreter prefix:

export QEMU_LD_PREFIX=/path/to/raspberry/arm-bcm2708/arm-rpi-4.9.3-linux-gnueabihf/arm-linux-gnueabihf/sysroot/

Obtain and install cross-compiled versions of sqlite3, gmp and zlib:

Download and build zlib:

wget https://zlib.net/zlib-1.2.11.tar.gz
tar xvf zlib-1.2.11.tar.gz
cd zlib-1.2.11
./configure --prefix=$QEMU_LD_PREFIX
make
make install

Download and build sqlite3:

wget https://www.sqlite.org/2018/sqlite-src-3260000.zip
unzip sqlite-src-3260000.zip
cd sqlite-src-3260000
./configure --enable-static --disable-readline --disable-threadsafe --disable-load-extension --host=$target_host --prefix=$QEMU_LD_PREFIX
make
make install

Download and build gmp:

wget https://gmplib.org/download/gmp/gmp-6.1.2.tar.xz
tar xvf gmp-6.1.2.tar.xz 
cd gmp-6.1.2
./configure --disable-assembly --prefix=$QEMU_LD_PREFIX
make
make install

Then, build c-lightning with the following commands:

./configure
make

To compile for Armbian

For all the other Pi devices out there, consider using Armbian.

You can compile in customize-image.sh using the instructions for Ubuntu.

A working example that compiles both bitcoind and c-lightning for Armbian can be found here.

Additional steps

Go to README for more information how to create an address, add funds, connect to a node, etc.