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Building Neovim from source

#neovim

Building neovim: A Comprehensive Guide

neovim is a highly customizable and a lightweight text editor (it can be configured to something much more!)
While it maybe installed to your system by using your favorite package manager, it is best used if you build it from source!
So enough talking and let's start building 🧱!

Prerequisites

Before you start building Neovim, you need some build dependencies installed on your system (psst you might need to update your package list by

sudo apt-get update
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on Ubuntu/Debian!):

Ubuntu/Debian 

sudo apt-get install ninja-build gettext libtool libtool-bin autoconf automake cmake g++ pkg-config unzip curl doxygen
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CentOS/RHEL/Fedora 

sudo yum -y install ninja-build libtool autoconf automake cmake gcc gcc-c++ make pkgconfig unzip patch gettext curl
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openSUSE 

sudo zypper install ninja libtool autoconf automake cmake gcc-c++ gettext-tools curl
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Arch Linux 

sudo pacman -S base-devel cmake unzip ninja tree-sitter curl
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Alpine Linux 

apk add build-base cmake automake autoconf libtool pkgconf coreutils curl unzip gettext-tiny-dev
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Void Linux 

xbps-install base-devel cmake curl git
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FreeBSD 

sudo pkg install cmake gmake libtool sha automake pkgconf unzip wget gettext curl
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OpenBSD 

doas pkg_add gmake cmake libtool unzip autoconf-2.69p2 automake-1.15p0 curl
export AUTOCONF_VERSION=2.69
export AUTOMAKE_VERSION=1.15
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OpenBSD 

doas pkg_add gmake cmake libtool unzip autoconf-2.69p2 automake-1.15p0 curl
export AUTOCONF_VERSION=2.69
export AUTOMAKE_VERSION=1.15
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MacOS/Homebrew 

brew install ninja libtool automake cmake pkg-config gettext curl
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Building neovim

Once you have installed the dependencies, you can start building neovim. The following steps will guide you through the process:

  1. Clone the neovim repository 
   git clone https://github.com/neovim/neovim.git
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  1. Navigate to the cloned repository 
   cd neovim
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  1. Build neovim 
   make CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo
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This might take some time, so you while you wait, you can go get a cup of Mocha ☕

  1. Install Neovim system wide Great! You've build neovim. But now, you need to install it to your system 
   sudo make install
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  1. Now if that's done finishing you should be able to start neovim by typing neovim in your terminal of choice.

If Neovim is successfully installed, this command should start the editor.

That's it! You've successfully built neovim from source!

   sudo make install
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  1. Run neovim 
   nvim
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If Neovim is successfully installed, this command should start the editor.
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Congratulations, you have successfully built Neovim from source!

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