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<h1><a id="installation">libvirt Installation</a></h1>
<ul id="toc"></ul>
<h2><a id="compiling">Compiling a release tarball</a></h2>
<p>
libvirt uses the standard setup/build/install steps and mandates
that the build directory is different from the source directory:
</p>
<pre>
$ xz -dc libvirt-x.x.x.tar.xz | tar xvf -
$ cd libvirt-x.x.x
$ meson build</pre>
<p>
The <i>meson</i> script can be given options to change its default
behaviour.
</p>
<p>
To get the complete list of the options run the following command:
</p>
<pre>
$ meson configure</pre>
<p>
When you have determined which options you want to use (if any),
continue the process.
</p>
<p>
Note the use of <b>sudo</b> with the <i>ninja install</i> command
below. Using sudo is only required when installing to a location your
user does not have write access to. Installing to a system location
is a good example of this.
</p>
<p>
If you are installing to a location that your user <i>does</i> have write
access to, then you can instead run the <i>ninja install</i> command
without putting <b>sudo</b> before it.
</p>
<pre>
$ meson build <i>[possible options]</i>
$ ninja -C build
$ <b>sudo</b> <i>ninja -C build install</i></pre>
<p>
At this point you <b>may</b> have to run ldconfig or a similar utility
to update your list of installed shared libs.
</p>
<h2><a id="building">Building from a GIT checkout</a></h2>
<p>
The libvirt build process uses Meson build system. By default when
the <code>meson</code> is run from within a GIT checkout, it
will turn on -Werror for builds. This can be disabled with
--werror=false, but this is not recommended.
</p>
<p>To build & install libvirt to your home
directory the following commands can be run:
</p>
<pre>
$ meson build --prefix=$HOME/usr
$ ninja -C build
$ <b>sudo</b> ninja -C build install</pre>
<p>
Be aware though, that binaries built with a custom prefix will not
interoperate with OS vendor provided binaries, since the UNIX socket
paths will all be different. To produce a build that is compatible
with normal OS vendor prefixes, use
</p>
<pre>
$ meson build -Dsystem=true
$ ninja -C build
</pre>
<p>
When doing this for day-to-day development purposes, it is recommended
not to install over the OS vendor provided binaries. Instead simply
run libvirt directly from the source tree. For example to run
a privileged libvirtd instance
</p>
<pre>
$ su -
# service libvirtd stop (or systemctl stop libvirtd.service)
# /home/to/your/checkout/src/libvirtd
</pre>
<p>
It is also possible to run virsh directly from the source tree
using the ./run script (which sets some environment variables):
</p>
<pre>
$ ./run ./tools/virsh ....
</pre>
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