Before compiling Alacritty, you'll have to first clone the source code:
git clone https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty.git cd alacritty
rustupInstall rustup.rs.
To make sure you have the right Rust compiler installed, run
rustup override set stable rustup update stable
These are the minimum dependencies required to build Alacritty, please note that with some setups additional dependencies might be desired.
If you‘re running Wayland with an Nvidia GPU, you’ll likely want the EGL drivers installed too (these are called libegl1-mesa-dev on Ubuntu).
You can build alacritty using cargo deb and use your system's package manager to maintain the application using the instructions below.
If you‘d still like to build a local version manually, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here’s an apt command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.
apt-get install cmake pkg-config libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig1-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev python3
On Arch Linux, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a pacman command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.
pacman -S cmake freetype2 fontconfig pkg-config make libxcb
On Fedora, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a dnf command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.
dnf install cmake freetype-devel fontconfig-devel libxcb-devel
On CentOS/RHEL 7, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a yum command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.
yum install cmake freetype-devel fontconfig-devel yum group install "Development Tools"
On openSUSE, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a zypper command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.
zypper install cmake freetype-devel fontconfig-devel libxcb-devel
Compiles out of the box for 14.2
On Void Linux, install following packages before compiling Alacritty:
xbps-install cmake freetype-devel expat-devel fontconfig-devel libxcb-devel pkg-config python3
On FreeBSD, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a pkg command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.
pkg install cmake freetype2 fontconfig pkgconf
On OpenBSD 6.5, you need Xenocara and Rust to build Alacritty, plus Python 3 to build its XCB dependency. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.
pkg_add rust python
Select the package for Python 3 (e.g. python-3.6.8p0) when prompted.
The default user limits in OpenBSD are insufficient to build Alacritty. A datasize-cur of at least 3GB is recommended (see login.conf).
On Solus, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a eopkg command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.
eopkg install fontconfig-devel
The following command can be used to get a shell with all development dependencies on NixOS.
nix-shell -A alacritty '<nixpkgs>'
On Gentoo, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. The following command should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.
emerge --onlydeps x11-terms/alacritty
On windows you will need to have the {architecture}-pc-windows-msvc toolchain installed as well as Clang 3.9 or greater.
On Clear Linux, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a swupd command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.
swupd bundle-add devpkg-expat devpkg-freetype devpkg-libxcb
If you build Alacritty on another distribution, we would love some help filling in this section of the README.
Once all the prerequisites are installed, compiling Alacritty should be easy:
cargo build --release
If all goes well, this should place a binary at target/release/alacritty. On Windows this directory should also contain the winpty-agent.exe.
Many linux distributions support desktop entries for adding applications to system menus. To install the desktop entry for Alacritty, run
sudo cp target/release/alacritty /usr/local/bin # or anywhere else in $PATH sudo cp extra/logo/alacritty-term.svg /usr/share/pixmaps/Alacritty.svg sudo desktop-file-install extra/linux/alacritty.desktop sudo update-desktop-database
To build an application for macOS, run
make app cp -r target/release/osx/Alacritty.app /Applications/
If you don't want to clone the repository, you can install Alacritty directly using cargo:
cargo install --git https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty
Using cargo deb, you can create and install a deb file.
cargo install cargo-deb cargo deb --install -p alacritty
To choose a default terminal app, use Debian's update-alternatives.
update-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulator
Installing the manual page requires the additional dependency gzip. To install the manual page, run
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/share/man/man1 gzip -c extra/alacritty.man | sudo tee /usr/local/share/man/man1/alacritty.1.gz > /dev/null
To get automatic completions for alacritty's flags and arguments you can install the provided shell completions.
To install the completions for zsh, you can place the extra/completions/_alacritty file in any directory referenced by $fpath.
If you do not already have such a directory registered through your ~/.zshrc, you can add one like this:
mkdir -p ${ZDOTDIR:-~}/.zsh_functions echo 'fpath+=${ZDOTDIR:-~}/.zsh_functions' >> ${ZDOTDIR:-~}/.zshrc
Then copy the completion file to this directory:
cp extra/completions/_alacritty ${ZDOTDIR:-~}/.zsh_functions/_alacritty
To install the completions for bash, you can source the extra/completions/alacritty.bash file in your ~/.bashrc file.
If you do not plan to delete the source folder of alacritty, you can run
echo "source $(pwd)/extra/completions/alacritty.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
Otherwise you can copy it to the ~/.bash_completion folder and source it from there:
mkdir -p ~/.bash_completion cp extra/completions/alacritty.bash ~/.bash_completion/alacritty echo "source ~/.bash_completion/alacritty" >> ~/.bashrc
To install the completions for fish, run
mkdir -p $fish_complete_path[1] cp extra/completions/alacritty.fish $fish_complete_path[1]/alacritty.fish
The terminfo database contains entries describing the terminal emulator's capabilities. Programs need these in order to function properly.
Alacritty should work with the standard xterm-256color definition, but to allow programs to make best use of alacritty's capabilities, use its own terminfo definition instead.
Unless the user has set the TERM environment variable in the alacritty configuration, the alacritty terminfo definition will be used if it has been installed. If not, then xterm-256color is used instead.
To install alacritty's terminfo entry globally:
sudo tic -xe alacritty,alacritty-direct extra/alacritty.info