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Building for Linux

An unofficial PKGBUILD of Citra is available for Arch Linux on the AUR.

Dependencies:

You’ll need to download and install the following to build Citra:

  • SDL2

    • Deb: apt install libsdl2-dev
    • Arch: pacman -S sdl2
    • Fedora: dnf install SDL2-devel
    • OpenSUSE: zypper in libSDL2-devel

  • OpenSSL (optional)

    • Deb: apt install libssl-dev
    • Arch: pacman -S openssl-1.0
    • Fedora: dnf install openssl-devel
    • OpenSUSE: zypper in openssl-devel

  • Qt 6.2+

    • Only 6.2+ versions are tested. Lower version might or might not work. See the section Install new Qt version below if your distro does not provide a sufficient version of Qt
    • Deb: apt install qt6-base-dev qt6-base-private-dev qt6-multimedia-dev
      • You may also need apt install qt6-l10n-tools qt6-tools-dev qt6-tools-dev-tools to build with translation support
    • Arch: pacman -S qt6-base qt6-multimedia qt6-multimedia-ffmpeg
      • You will also need to install a multimedia backend, either qt6-multimedia-ffmpeg or qt6-multimedia-gstreamer.
    • Fedora: dnf install qt6-qtbase-devel qt6-qtbase-private-devel qt6-qtmultimedia-devel
    • OpenSUSE: zypper in qt6-base qt6-multimedia

  • Optional dependencies needed for HLE AAC Decoding on Linux

    • FFMPEG 4.0+
      • Deb: sudo apt install ffmpeg libswscale-dev libavformat-dev libavcodec-dev libavdevice-dev
      • Fedora: dnf install ffmpeg-devel compat-ffmpeg4
      • OpenSUSE Leap 15: zypper in ffmpeg-3 ffmpeg-3-libavcodec-devel
      • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed: zypper in ffmpeg-4 ffmpeg-4-libavcodec-devel

  • Compiler: GCC or Clang. You only need one of these two:

    • GCC 10.0+.
      • Deb: apt install build-essential
      • Arch: pacman -S base-devel
      • Fedora: dnf install gcc-c++
      • OpenSUSE: zypper in gcc-c++
    • Clang 9.0+
      • Deb: apt install clang clang-format libc++-dev (in some distros, clang-9.0).
      • Arch: pacman -S clang, libc++ is in the AUR. Use pacaur or yaourt to install it.
      • Fedora: dnf install clang libcxx-devel
      • OpenSUSE: zypper in clang

  • CMake 3.20+

    • Deb: apt install cmake
    • Arch: pacman -S cmake
    • Fedora: dnf install cmake
    • OpenSUSE: zypper in cmake extra-cmake-modules

  • Note on Boost library: you don’t need to install Boost library on your system, because citra provides a bundled trimmed Boost library. However, if you already have Boost library installed on your system, please make sure its version is at least 1.66 (which contains a bug fix for GCC 7), otherwise compilation would fail.

Cloning Citra in Git:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/citra-emu/citra
cd citra

The --recursive option automatically clones the required Git submodules too.

Building Citra in Debug Mode (Slow):

Using gcc:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
cmake --build . -- -j"$(nproc)"
sudo make install (optional)
  • To enable HLE AAC Decoding, use cmake .. -DENABLE_FFMPEG_AUDIO_DECODER=ON instead.

Optionally, you can use “cmake -i ..” to adjust various options (e.g. disable the Qt GUI).

Using clang:

Note: It is important you use libc++, otherwise your build will likely fail:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++-5.0 \
	-DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang-5.0 \
	-DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-O2 -g -stdlib=libc++"
cmake --build . -- -j"$(nproc)"
sudo make install (optional)

Building Citra in Release Mode (Optimized):

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build . -- -j"$(nproc)"
sudo make install (optional)
  • To enable HLE AAC Decoding, use cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DENABLE_FFMPEG_AUDIO_DECODER=ON instead.

Building with debug symbols:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo
cmake --build . -- -j"$(nproc)"
sudo make install (optional)

Running without installing:

After building, the binaries citra, citra-qt and citra-room (depending on your build options) will end up in build/bin/.

# SDL
cd build/bin/
./citra

# Qt
cd build/bin/
./citra-qt

# Dedicated room
cd build/bin/
./citra-room

Debugging:

cd data
gdb ../build/bin/citra-qt
(gdb) run

(gdb) bt

Install new Qt version

If your distribution’s version of Qt is too old, there are a few places you may be able to find newer versions.