Installation
This page will guide you through the steps needed to prepare a computer for Substrate development. Since Substrate is built with the Rust programming language, the first thing you will need to do is prepare the computer for Rust development - these steps will vary based on the computer's operating system. Then, you can use the helpful utilities from the Rust toolchain to configure the Rust development environment - these steps will be the same for all the (Unix-based) operating systems discussed on this page.
Operating System-Dependent Set-Up
Follow the steps for your computer's operating system before installing and configuring the Rust toolchain.
Unix-Based Operating Systems
Substrate development is easiest on Unix-based operating systems, like macOS or Linux. The examples in the Substrate Tutorials and Recipes use Unix-style terminals to demonstrate how to interact with Substrate from the command line.
macOS
Open the Terminal application and execute the following commands:
# Install Homebrew if necessary https://brew.sh/
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"
# Make sure Homebrew is up-to-date and install some dependencies
brew update
brew install openssl cmake llvm
Ubuntu/Debian
Use your favorite terminal shell to execute the following commands:
sudo apt update
# May prompt for location information
sudo apt install -y cmake pkg-config libssl-dev git build-essential clang libclang-dev curl
Arch Linux
Run these commands from a terminal:
pacman -Syu --needed --noconfirm cmake gcc openssl-1.0 pkgconf git clang
export OPENSSL_LIB_DIR="/usr/lib/openssl-1.0"
export OPENSSL_INCLUDE_DIR="/usr/include/openssl-1.0"
Windows
Please refer to the separate guide for Windows users.
Rust Developer Environment
This guide uses rustup to help manage the Rust toolchain; first, install and
configure rustup:
# Install
curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh
# Configure
source ~/.cargo/env
Configure the Rust toolchain to default to the latest stable version:
rustup default stable
WebAssembly Compilation
Substrate uses WebAssembly (Wasm) to produce portable blockchain
runtimes. You will need to configure your Rust compiler to use nightly builds to allow you to
compile Rust code to the Wasm target:
rustup update nightly
rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown --toolchain nightly
Updating the Rust Toolchain
Substrate always uses the latest version of Rust stable and nightly for compilation. To ensure your Rust compiler is always up to date, you should run:
rustup update
It may be necessary to occasionally rerun rustup update if a change in the upstream Substrate
codebase depends on a new feature of the Rust compiler.
Test Your Set-Up
The best way to ensure that you have successfully prepared a computer for Substrate development is to follow the steps in our first tutorial, Create Your First Substrate Chain.