Prerequisites

DuckDB needs CMake and a C++11-compliant compiler (e.g., GCC, Apple-Clang, MSVC). Additionally, we recommend using the Ninja build system, which automatically parallelizes the build process.

UNIX-Like Systems

macOS Packages

Install Xcode and Homebrew. Then, install the required packages with:

brew install git cmake ninja

Linux Packages

Install the required packages with the package manager of your distribution.

Ubuntu and Debian

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y git g++ cmake ninja-build libssl-dev

Fedora, CentOS, and Red Hat

sudo yum install -y git g++ cmake ninja-build openssl-devel

Alpine Linux

apk add g++ git make cmake ninja

Note that Alpine Linux uses the musl libc as its C standard library. There are no official binaries distributed for musl libc but DuckDB can be build with it manually following the instructions on this page.

Cloning the Repository

Clone the DuckDB repository:

git clone https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb

We recommend creating a full clone of the repository. Note that the directory uses approximately 1.3 GB of disk space.

Building DuckDB

To build DuckDB, we use a Makefile which in turn calls into CMake. We also advise using Ninja as the generator for CMake.

GEN=ninja make

Bestpractice It is not advised to directly call CMake, as the Makefile sets certain variables that are crucial to properly building the package.

Once the build finishes successfully, you can find the duckdb binary in the build directory:

build/release/duckdb

Linking Extensions

For testing, it can be useful to build DuckDB with statically linked core extensions. To do so, run:

CORE_EXTENSIONS='autocomplete;httpfs;icu;parquet;json' GEN=ninja make

This option also accepts out-of-tree extensions:

CORE_EXTENSIONS='autocomplete;httpfs;icu;parquet;json;delta' GEN=ninja make

For more details, see the “Building Extensions” page.

Windows

On Windows, DuckDB requires the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package both as a build-time and runtime dependency. Note that unlike the build process on UNIX-like systems, the Windows builds directly call CMake.

Visual Studio

To build DuckDB on Windows, we recommend using the Visual Studio compiler. To use it, follow the instructions in the CI workflow:

python scripts/windows_ci.py
cmake \
    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_GENERATOR_PLATFORM=x64 \
    -DENABLE_EXTENSION_AUTOLOADING=1 -DENABLE_EXTENSION_AUTOINSTALL=1 \
    -DDUCKDB_EXTENSION_CONFIGS="${GITHUB_WORKSPACE}/.github/config/bundled_extensions.cmake" \
    -DDISABLE_UNITY=1 -DOVERRIDE_GIT_DESCRIBE="$OVERRIDE_GIT_DESCRIBE"
cmake --build . --config Release --parallel

MSYS2 and MinGW64

DuckDB on Windows can also be built with MSYS2 and MinGW64. Note that this build is only supported for compatibility reasons and should only be used if the Visual Studio build is not feasible on a given platform. To build DuckDB with MinGW64, install the required dependencies using Pacman. When prompted with Enter a selection (default=all), select the default option by pressing Enter.

pacman -Syu git mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-ninja
git clone https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb
cd duckdb
cmake -G "Ninja" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBUILD_EXTENSIONS="icu;parquet;json"
cmake --build . --config Release 

Once the build finishes successfully, you can find the duckdb.exe binary in the repository's directory:

./duckdb.exe

Raspberry Pi (32-bit)

On 32-bit Raspberry Pi boards, you need to add the -latomic link flag. As extensions are not distributed for this platform, it's recommended to also include them in the build. For example:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. \
    -DBUILD_EXTENSIONS="httpfs;json;parquet" \
    -DDUCKDB_EXTRA_LINK_FLAGS="-latomic"
make -j4

Troubleshooting

The Build Runs Out of Memory

Ninja parallelizes the build, which can cause out-of-memory issues on systems with limited resources. These issues have also been reported to occur on Alpine Linux, especially on machines with limited resources. In these cases, avoid using Ninja by setting the Makefile generator to empty (GEN=):

GEN= make