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Firedancer must be built from source and currently only supports building and running on Linux. This guide will walk you through installing all the necessary prerequisites and dependencies.

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Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure your system meets these requirements:
Firedancer requires a recent Linux kernel, at least v4.18. This corresponds to Ubuntu 20.04, Fedora 29, Debian 11, or RHEL 8.

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Required Software

You need the following software installed on your system:
  • GCC version 8.5 or higher - Only GCC versions 11, 12, and 13 are officially supported and tested by the Firedancer developers
  • rustup - Rust toolchain installer available at rustup.rs
  • clang - C language family frontend for LLVM
  • git - Version control system
  • make - Build automation tool
Firedancer currently builds the Agave validator as a dependency, which requires a full Rust toolchain. Once Firedancer is able to stand alone, this will no longer be required.

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Clone the Repository

First, clone the Firedancer source code with all submodules: 
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/firedancer-io/firedancer.git
cd firedancer
1

Checkout the latest release

After cloning, checkout the latest Frankendancer release tag:
git checkout v0.xxx.yyyyy  # Replace with latest Frankendancer release
Check the Releases Guide for the latest version tag.
2

Install system dependencies

Run the deps.sh script to install system packages and compile library dependencies:
./deps.sh
This script will:
  • Install system packages via your system’s package manager
  • Compile library dependencies
  • Output compiled dependencies to the ./opt directory

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Understanding Releases

Firedancer does not produce pre-built binaries, so you must build from source. Releases are made available as tags with the following naming convention:
Do not use the main branch. The main branch is bleeding edge and includes all Firedancer development and changes that could break Frankendancer.

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Version Format: v0.xxx.yyyyy

The Frankendancer versioning has three components:
  • Major version is always 0 - The first full Firedancer release will be 1.x
  • Minor version increments by 100 for each new Frankendancer release, then by 1 for minor versions within that release
  • Patch number encodes the Agave validator version (e.g., Agave v1.17.14 is represented as 11714)

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Release Branch Example

================= main branch =================
   \                             \
    \ v0.100.11814                \ v0.200.11901
     \                             \
      \ v0.100.11815                \ v0.201.11902
       \
        \ v0.101.11815

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Next Steps

Now that you have installed all dependencies, you’re ready to:

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