Installation instructions

These instructions will guide you through the process of building and installing the toxcore library and its components, as well as getting already pre-built binaries.

Table of contents

• Overview
  • Components
    • Main
    • Secondary
• Building
  • Requirements
    • Library dependencies
    • Compiler requirements
    • Build system requirements
  • CMake options
  • Build process
    • Unix-like
    • Windows
      • Building on Windows host
        • Microsoft Visual Studio's Developer Command Prompt
        • MSYS/Cygwin
      • Cross-compiling from Linux
• Pre-built binaries
  • Linux

Overview

Components

Main

This repository, although called toxcore, in fact contains several libraries besides toxcore which complement it, as well as several executables. However, note that although these are separate libraries, at the moment, when building the libraries, they are all merged into a single toxcore library. Here is the full list of the main components that can be built using the CMake, their dependencies and descriptions.

Name	Type	Dependencies	Platform	Description
toxcore	Library	libsodium, libm, libpthread, librt	Cross-platform	The main Tox library that provides the messenger functionality.
toxav	Library	libtoxcore, libopus, libvpx	Cross-platform	Provides audio/video functionality.
toxencryptsave	Library	libtoxcore, libsodium	Cross-platform	Provides encryption of Tox profiles (savedata), as well as arbitrary data.
DHT_bootstrap	Executable	libtoxcore	Cross-platform	A simple DHT bootstrap node.
tox-bootstrapd	Executable	libtoxcore, libconfig	Unix-like	Highly configurable DHT bootstrap node daemon (systemd, SysVinit, Docker).
cmp	Library		Cross-platform	C implementation of the MessagePack serialization format. https://github.com/camgunz/cmp

Secondary

There are some programs that are not built by default which you might find interesting. You need to pass -DBUILD_FUN_UTILS=ON to cmake to build them.

Vanity key generators

Can be used to generate vanity Tox Ids or DHT bootstrap node public keys.

Name	Type	Dependencies	Platform	Description
cracker	Executable	libsodium, OpenMP	Cross-platform	Tries to find a curve25519 key pair, hex representation of the public key of which starts with a specified byte sequence. Multi-threaded.
cracker_simple	Executable	libsodium	Cross-platform	Tries to find a curve25519 key pair, hex representation of the public key of which starts with a specified byte sequence. Single-threaded.
strkey	Executable	libsodium	Cross-platform	Tries to find a curve25519 key pair, hex representation of the public key of which contains a specified byte sequence at a specified or any position at all. Single-threaded.

Key file generators

Useful for generating Tox profiles from the output of the vanity key generators, as well as generating random Tox profiles.

Name	Type	Dependencies	Platform	Description
make-funny-savefile	Script	python	Cross-platform	Generates a Tox profile file (savedata file) with the provided key pair.
create_bootstrap_keys	Executable	libsodium	Cross-platform	Generates a keys file for tox-bootstrapd with either the provided or a random key pair.
create_minimal_savedata	Executable	libsodium	Cross-platform	Generates a minimal Tox profile file (savedata file) with either the provided or a random key pair, printing the generated Tox Id and secret & public key information.
create_savedata	Executable	libsodium, libtoxcore	Cross-platform	Generates a Tox profile file (savedata file) with either the provided or a random key pair using libtoxcore, printing the generated Tox Id and secret & public key information.
save-generator	Executable	libtoxcore	Cross-platform	Generates a Tox profile file (savedata file) with a random key pair using libtoxcore, setting the specified user name, going online and adding specified Tox Ids as friends.

Other

Name	Type	Dependencies	Platform	Description
bootstrap_node_info	Script	python3	Cross-platform	Prints version and Message Of The Day (MOTD) information of the specified DHT bootstrap node, given the node doesn't have those disabled.
sign	Executable	libsodium	Cross-platform	Signs a file with a ed25519 key.

Building

Requirements

Library dependencies

Library dependencies are listed in the components table. The dependencies need to be satisfied for the components to be built. Note that if you don't have a dependency for some component, e.g. you don't have libopus installed required for building toxav component, building of that component is silently disabled.

Be advised that due to the addition of cmp as a submodule, you now also need to initialize the git submodules required by toxcore. This can be done by cloning the repo with the addition of --recurse-submodules or by running git submodule update --init in the root directory of the repo.

Compiler requirements

The supported compilers are GCC, Clang and MinGW.

In theory, any compiler that fully supports C99 and accepts GCC flags should work.

There is a partial and experimental support of Microsoft Visual C++ compiler. We welcome any patches that help improve it.

You should have a C99 compatible compiler in order to build the main components. The secondary components might require the compiler to support GNU extensions.

Build system requirements

To build the main components you need to have CMake of at least 2.8.6 version installed. You also need to have pkg-config installed, the build system uses it to find dependency libraries.

There is some experimental accommodation for building natively on Windows, i.e. without having to use MSYS/Cygwin and pkg-config, but it uses exact hardcoded paths for finding libraries and supports building only of some of toxcore components, so your mileage might vary.

CMake options

There are some options that are available to configure the build.

Name	Description	Expected Value	Default Value
AUTOTEST	Enable autotests (mainly for CI).	ON or OFF	OFF
BOOTSTRAP_DAEMON	Enable building of tox-bootstrapd, the DHT bootstrap node daemon. For Unix-like systems only.	ON or OFF	ON
BUILD_FUN_UTILS	Build additional just for fun utilities.	ON or OFF	OFF
BUILD_FUZZ_TESTS	Build fuzzing harnesses.	ON or OFF	OFF
BUILD_MISC_TESTS	Build additional tests.	ON or OFF	OFF
BUILD_TOXAV	Whether to build the toxav library.	ON or OFF	ON
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE	Specifies the build type on single-configuration generators (e.g. make or ninja).	Debug, Release, RelWithDebInfo, MinSizeRel	Empty string.
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX	Path to where everything should be installed.	Directory path.	Platform-dependent. Refer to CMake documentation.
DHT_BOOTSTRAP	Enable building of DHT_bootstrap.	ON or OFF	ON
ENABLE_SHARED	Build shared (dynamic) libraries for all modules.	ON or OFF	ON
ENABLE_STATIC	Build static libraries for all modules.	ON or OFF	ON
EXPERIMENTAL_API	Install experimental header file with unstable API.	ON or OFF	OFF
FLAT_OUTPUT_STRUCTURE	Whether to produce output artifacts in {bin,lib}.	ON or OFF	OFF
FULLY_STATIC	Build fully static executables.	ON or OFF	OFF
MIN_LOGGER_LEVEL	Logging level to use.	TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR or nothing (empty string) for default.	Empty string.
MSVC_STATIC_SODIUM	Whether to link libsodium statically for MSVC.	ON or OFF	OFF
MUST_BUILD_TOXAV	Fail the build if toxav cannot be built.	ON or OFF	OFF
NON_HERMETIC_TESTS	Whether to build and run tests that depend on an internet connection.	ON or OFF	OFF
PROXY_TEST	Enable proxy test (requires other/proxy/proxy_server.go to be running).	ON or OFF	OFF
STRICT_ABI	Enforce strict ABI export in dynamic libraries.	ON or OFF	OFF
TEST_TIMEOUT_SECONDS	Limit runtime of each test to the number of seconds specified.	Positive number or nothing (empty string).	Empty string.
UNITTEST	Enable unit tests (disable if you don't have a working gmock or gtest).	ON or OFF	ON
USE_IPV6	Use IPv6 in tests.	ON or OFF	ON

You can get this list of option using the following commands

cmake -B _build -LAH

or

grep "option(" CMakeLists.txt cmake/*
grep "set(.* CACHE" CMakeLists.txt cmake/*

Note that some options might be considered only if other options are enabled.

Example of calling cmake with options

cmake \
  -D ENABLE_STATIC=OFF \
  -D ENABLE_SHARED=ON \
  -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="${PWD}/prefix" \
  -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
  -D TEST_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=120 \
  ..

Building tests

In addition to the integration tests ("autotests") and miscellaneous tests enabled by cmake variables described above, there are unit tests which will be built if the source distribution of gtest (the Google Unit Test framework) is found by cmake in c-toxcore/third_party. This can be achieved by running 'git clone https://github.com/google/googletest` from that directory.

Build process

Unix-like

Assuming all the requirements are met, just run

mkdir _build
cd _build
cmake ..
make
make install

or shorter

cmake -B _build
cmake -B _build --target install

Windows

Building on Windows host

Microsoft Visual Studio's Developer Command Prompt

In addition to meeting the requirements, you need a version of Visual Studio (the community edition is enough) and a CMake version that's compatible with the Visual Studio version you're using.

You must also ensure that the msvc versions of dependencies you're using are placed in the correct folders.

For libsodium that is c-toxcore/third_party/libsodium, and for pthreads-w32, it's c-toxcore/third_party/pthreads-win32

Once all of this is done, from the Developer Command Prompt for VS, simply run

mkdir _build
cd _build
cmake ..
msbuild ALL_BUILD.vcxproj

MSYS/Cygwin

Download Cygwin (32-bit/64-bit)

Search and select exactly these packages in Devel category:

• mingw64-i686-gcc-core (32-bit) / mingw64-x86_64-gcc-core (64-bit)
• mingw64-i686-gcc-g++ (32-bit) / mingw64-x86_64-gcc-g++ (64-bit)
• make
• cmake
• libtool
• autoconf
• automake
• tree
• curl
• perl
• yasm
• pkg-config

To handle Windows EOL correctly run the following in the Cygwin Terminal:

echo '
export SHELLOPTS
set -o igncr
' > ~/.bash_profile

Download toxcore source code and extract it to a folder.

Open Cygwin Terminal in the toxcore folder and run ./other/windows_build_script_toxcore.sh to start the build process.

Toxcore build result files will appear in /root/prefix/ relatively to Cygwin folder (default C:\cygwin64).

Dependency versions can be customized in ./other/windows_build_script_toxcore.sh and described in the section below.

Cross-compiling from Linux

These cross-compilation instructions were tested on and written for 64-bit Ubuntu 16.04. You could generalize them for any Linux system, the only requirements are that you have Docker version of >= 1.9.0 and you are running 64-bit system.

The cross-compilation is fully automated by a parameterized Dockerfile.

Install Docker

apt-get update
apt-get install docker.io

Get the toxcore source code and navigate to other/docker/windows.

Build the container image based on the Dockerfile. The following options are available to customize the building of the container image.

Name	Description	Expected Value	Default Value
SUPPORT_ARCH_i686	Support building 32-bit toxcore.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	true
SUPPORT_ARCH_x86_64	Support building 64-bit toxcore.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	true
SUPPORT_TEST	Support running toxcore automated tests.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	false
VERSION_OPUS	Version of libopus to build toxcore with.	Numeric version number.	1.4
VERSION_SODIUM	Version of libsodium to build toxcore with.	Numeric version number.	1.0.19
VERSION_VPX	Version of libvpx to build toxcore with.	Numeric version number.	1.14.0
ENABLE_HASH_VERIFICATION	Verify the hashes of the default dependency versions.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	true

Example of building a container image with options

docker build \
  --build-arg SUPPORT_TEST=true \
  -t toxcore \
  -f other/docker/windows/windows.Dockerfile \
  .

Run the container to build toxcore. The following options are available to customize the running of the container image.

Name	Description	Expected Value	Default Value
ALLOW_TEST_FAILURE	Don't stop if a test suite fails.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	false
ENABLE_ARCH_i686	Build 32-bit toxcore. The image should have been built with SUPPORT_ARCH_i686 enabled.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	true
ENABLE_ARCH_x86_64	Build 64-bit toxcore. The image should have been built with SUPPORT_ARCH_x86_64 enabled.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	true
ENABLE_TEST	Run the test suite. The image should have been built with SUPPORT_TEST enabled.	"true" or "false" (case sensitive).	false
EXTRA_CMAKE_FLAGS	Extra arguments to pass to the CMake command when building toxcore.	CMake options.	-DTEST_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=90 -DUSE_IPV6=OFF

Example of running the container with options

docker run \
  -e ENABLE_TEST=true \
  -e ALLOW_TEST_FAILURE=true \
  -v /path/to/toxcore/sourcecode:/toxcore \
  -v /path/to/where/output/build/result:/prefix \
  -t \
  --rm \
  toxcore

After the build succeeds, you should see the built toxcore libraries in /path/to/where/output/build/result.

The file structure should look similar to the following

result
├── [4.0K]  i686
│   ├── [ 36K]  bin
│   │   ├── [636K]  DHT_bootstrap.exe
│   │   ├── [572K]  cracker.exe
│   │   ├── [359K]  cracker_simple.exe
│   │   ├── [378K]  create_bootstrap_keys.exe
│   │   ├── [378K]  create_minimal_savedata.exe
│   │   ├── [958K]  create_savedata.exe
│   │   ├── [ 18K]  libtoxcore.def
│   │   ├── [2.6M]  libtoxcore.dll
│   │   ├── [ 65K]  libtoxcore.exp
│   │   ├── [428K]  libtoxcore.lib
│   │   ├── [989K]  save-generator.exe
│   │   ├── [381K]  sign.exe
│   │   └── [408K]  strkey.exe
│   ├── [4.0K]  include
│   │   └── [4.0K]  tox
│   │       ├── [177K]  tox.h
│   │       ├── [ 10K]  tox_dispatch.h
│   │       ├── [ 26K]  tox_events.h
│   │       ├── [6.4K]  tox_private.h
│   │       ├── [ 26K]  toxav.h
│   │       └── [ 12K]  toxencryptsave.h
│   └── [4.0K]  lib
│       ├── [577K]  libopus.a
│       ├── [660K]  libsodium.a
│       ├── [ 10K]  libssp.a
│       ├── [1016K]  libtoxcore.a
│       ├── [456K]  libtoxcore.dll.a
│       ├── [2.7M]  libvpx.a
│       ├── [ 72K]  libwinpthread.a
│       └── [4.0K]  pkgconfig
│           ├── [ 250]  libsodium.pc
│           ├── [ 357]  opus.pc
│           ├── [ 247]  toxcore.pc
│           └── [ 309]  vpx.pc
└── [4.0K]  x86_64
    ├── [ 36K]  bin
    │   ├── [504K]  DHT_bootstrap.exe
    │   ├── [474K]  cracker.exe
    │   ├── [277K]  cracker_simple.exe
    │   ├── [287K]  create_bootstrap_keys.exe
    │   ├── [288K]  create_minimal_savedata.exe
    │   ├── [769K]  create_savedata.exe
    │   ├── [ 18K]  libtoxcore.def
    │   ├── [2.4M]  libtoxcore.dll
    │   ├── [ 64K]  libtoxcore.exp
    │   ├── [420K]  libtoxcore.lib
    │   ├── [800K]  save-generator.exe
    │   ├── [289K]  sign.exe
    │   └── [317K]  strkey.exe
    ├── [4.0K]  include
    │   └── [4.0K]  tox
    │       ├── [177K]  tox.h
    │       ├── [ 10K]  tox_dispatch.h
    │       ├── [ 26K]  tox_events.h
    │       ├── [6.4K]  tox_private.h
    │       ├── [ 26K]  toxav.h
    │       └── [ 12K]  toxencryptsave.h
    └── [4.0K]  lib
        ├── [697K]  libopus.a
        ├── [575K]  libsodium.a
        ├── [ 11K]  libssp.a
        ├── [905K]  libtoxcore.a
        ├── [449K]  libtoxcore.dll.a
        ├── [2.9M]  libvpx.a
        ├── [ 68K]  libwinpthread.a
        └── [4.0K]  pkgconfig
            ├── [ 252]  libsodium.pc
            ├── [ 359]  opus.pc
            ├── [ 249]  toxcore.pc
            └── [ 311]  vpx.pc

12 directories, 60 files

• libtoxcore.dll is the shared library. It is fully self-contained, with no additional dependencies aside from the Windows OS dlls, and can be used in MSVC, MinGW, Clang, etc. projects. Despite its name, it provides toxcore, toxav, toxencryptsave -- all of Tox.
• libtoxcore.a is the static library. In order to use it, it needs to be linked against the other provided .a libraries (but not the .dll.a!) and additionally -liphlpapi and -lws2_32 Windows dlls. It similarly provides all of Tox APIs.
• libtoxcore.dll.a is the MinGW import library for libtoxcore.dll.
• libtoxcore.lib is the MSVC import library for libtoxcore.dll.
• libtoxcore.exp and libtoxcore.def are the exported by libtoxcore symbols.
• *.exe are statically compiled executables -- DHT_bootstrap and the fun utils.

Pre-built binaries

Linux

Toxcore is packaged by at least by the following distributions: ALT Linux, Arch Linux, Fedora, Mageia, openSUSE, PCLinuxOS, ROSA and Slackware, according to the information from pkgs.org. Note that this list might be incomplete and some other distributions might package it too.