Installation

The preferred installation method for Builder is via Flatpak. This provides a bandwidth efficient and safe to use installation method that can be easily kept up to date. It is also the engine behind Builder’s powerful SDK!

via Flatpak

If you have a recent Linux distribution, such as Fedora 26, simply download the Stable Flatpak and click Install when Software opens. If Software does not automatically open, try opening the Stable flatpakref by double clicking it in your file browser.

If you want to track Builder development, you might want the Nightly channel instead of Stable.

Command Line

You can also use the command line to install Builder:

Stable

$ flatpak install --from https://flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.gnome.Builder.flatpakref
$ flatpak run org.gnome.Builder

Nightly

$ flatpak install --user --from https://nightly.gnome.org/repo/appstream/org.gnome.Builder.Devel.flatpakref
$ flatpak run org.gnome.Builder.Devel

Note

Nightly builds are built with tracing enabled. The tracing is fairly lightweight, but it includes a great deal of more debugging information.

via JHBuild

If you plan on contributing to the GNOME desktop and application suite, you may want to install Builder via JHBuild. See the Newcomers Tutorial for more information on joining the community and installing JHBuild.

We are aggressively moving towards using Flatpak for contributing to Builder, but we aren’t quite there yet.

Command Line

Note

Please review the GNOME Newcomers Tutorial on how to build a GNOME application before proceeding.

# Make sure you have the following packages installed before starting

# On Fedora
$ sudo dnf install clang-devel llvm-devel libssh2-devel

# On Ubuntu
$ sudo apt-get install clang-3.9 libclang-3.9-dev llvm-3.9-dev libssh2-1-dev

$ git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/jhbuild.git
$ cd jhbuild
$ ./autogen.sh --simple-install
$ make
$ make install
$ jhbuild sysdeps --install gnome-builder
$ jhbuild build gnome-builder
$ jhbuild run gnome-builder

Warning

While it may be tempting to install jhbuild using your Linux distribution’s package manager, it will lack an updated description of the GNOME modules and is therefore insufficient. Always install jhbuild from git.

via Release Tarball

We do not recommend installing from release tarballs unless you are a Linux distribution. Builder has a complex set of dependencies which heavily target the current release of GNOME. Keeping up with these requires updating much of the GNOME desktop.

Please install via Flatpak, which does not have this restriction.

We use Meson (and thereby Ninja) to build Builder.

$ meson . build
$ ninja -C build install

Troubleshooting

If you are having trouble running Builder, start Builder with verbose output. This will log more information about the running system. The gnome-builder program can take multiple arguments of -v to increase verbosity. For example, if running from flatpak:

$ flatpak run org.gnome.Builder -vvvv

If you’re running from a system installed package of Builder, the binary name is gnome-builder.

$ gnome-builder -vvvv

If your issue persists, please consider filing a bug.