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 boost-libs cmake git libevent 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.

pkg install gmake
gmake -C depends NO_BOOST=1 NO_LIBEVENT=1 NO_QT=1 NO_SQLITE=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, the libqrencode and pass -DBUILD_GUI=ON. 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 will be able to encode addresses in QR codes unless this feature is explicitly disabled. To install libqrencode, run:

pkg install libqrencode

Otherwise, if you don't need QR encoding support, use the -DWITH_QRENCODE=OFF option to disable this feature in order to compile the GUI.

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Notifications

ZeroMQ

Bitcoin Core can provide notifications via ZeroMQ. To compile ZMQ support, install the following dependency and pass -DWITH_ZMQ=ON when configuring.

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 net/py-pyzmq

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Building Bitcoin Core

1. Configuration

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

Descriptor Wallet and GUI:

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

cmake -B build -DWITH_BDB=OFF -DBUILD_GUI=ON

Run cmake -B build -LH to see the full list of available options.

Descriptor & Legacy Wallet. No GUI:

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

cmake -B build -DBerkeleyDB_INCLUDE_DIR:PATH="${BDB_PREFIX}/include" -DWITH_BDB=ON

No Wallet or GUI

cmake -B build -DENABLE_WALLET=OFF

2. Compile

cmake --build build     # Append "-j N" for N parallel jobs.
ctest --test-dir build  # Append "-j N" for N parallel tests. Some tests are disabled if Python 3 is not available.