OpenBSD Build Guide
November 25, 2025 ยท View on GitHub
Updated for OpenBSD 7.3
This guide describes how to build dashd, command-line utilities, and GUI on OpenBSD.
Preparation
1. Install Required Dependencies
Run the following as root to install the base dependencies for building.
pkg_add bash git gmake gmp libevent libtool boost
# Select the newest version of the following packages:
pkg_add autoconf automake python
git clone https://github.com/dashpay/dash.git
See dependencies.md for a complete overview.
2. Clone Dash Core Repo
Clone the Dash Core repository to a directory. All build scripts and commands will run from this directory.
git clone https://github.com/dashpay/dash.git
3. Install Optional Dependencies
Wallet Dependencies
It is not necessary to build wallet functionality to run either dashd or dash-qt.
Descriptor Wallet Support
sqlite3 is required to support descriptor wallets.
pkg_add sqlite3
Legacy Wallet Support
BerkeleyDB is only required to support legacy wallets.
It is recommended to use Berkeley DB 4.8. You cannot use the BerkeleyDB library from ports. However you can build it yourself, using depends.
gmake -C depends NO_BOOST=1 NO_LIBEVENT=1 NO_QT=1 NO_SQLITE=1 NO_NATPMP=1 NO_UPNP=1 NO_ZMQ=1 NO_USDT=1
...
to: /path/to/dash/depends/x86_64-unknown-openbsd
Then set BDB_PREFIX:
export BDB_PREFIX="/path/to/dash/depends/x86_64-unknown-openbsd"
GUI Dependencies
Qt5
Dash Core includes a GUI built with the cross-platform Qt Framework. To compile the GUI, Qt 5 is required.
pkg_add qt5
Building Dash Core
Important: Use gmake (the non-GNU make will exit with an error).
Preparation:
# Adapt the following for the version you installed (major.minor only):
export AUTOCONF_VERSION=2.71
export AUTOMAKE_VERSION=1.16
./autogen.sh
1. Configuration
There are many ways to configure Dash Core, here are a few common examples:
Descriptor Wallet and GUI:
This enables the GUI and descriptor wallet support, assuming sqlite and qt5 are installed.
./configure MAKE=gmake
Descriptor & Legacy Wallet. No GUI:
This enables support for both wallet types and disables the GUI:
./configure --with-gui=no \
BDB_LIBS="-L${BDB_PREFIX}/lib -ldb_cxx-4.8" \
BDB_CFLAGS="-I${BDB_PREFIX}/include" \
MAKE=gmake
2. Compile
Important: Use gmake (the non-GNU make will exit with an error).
gmake # use "-j N" for N parallel jobs
gmake check # Run tests if Python 3 is available
Resource limits
If the build runs into out-of-memory errors, the instructions in this section might help.
The standard ulimit restrictions in OpenBSD are very strict:
data(kbytes) 1572864
This, unfortunately, in some cases not enough to compile some .cpp files in the project,
(see issue #6658).
If your user is in the staff group the limit can be raised with:
ulimit -d 3000000
The change will only affect the current shell and processes spawned by it. To
make the change system-wide, change datasize-cur and datasize-max in
/etc/login.conf, and reboot.