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Development

Prerequisites

  • Git
  • Rust (>= 1.91)
  • cbindgen
  • CMake (>= 3.25)
  • C++23-compatible compiler (clang 18+, gcc 14+, MSVC 2022+)
  • C++23-complete STL (>=libstdc++14, >=libc++23, >=MSVC 2022).

Required libraries

Required

  • Qt6 (>= 6.8.2)
  • libarchive
  • liblzma
  • quickjs-ng
  • glaze (>= 7.5.0)

Qt6 (≥ 6.8.2)

Required modules:

  • Widgets
  • Gui
  • Network
  • Concurrent
  • Svg
  • LinguistTools

Platform-specific:

  • Wayland (Linux only)

Optional image format support (PNG, JPEG, etc.) can be omitted if intentionally configured.

Optional

These are conditionally required based on build flags.

Spellchecking (ENABLE_NUSPELL)

  • Nuspell
  • ICU (uc, data components only)

Media / Asset Playback (ENABLE_ASSET_PLAYBACK)

  • FFmpeg (≥ 7.1.1)

  • Libraries:

    • avutil
    • avcodec
    • avformat
    • swresample
    • swscale

  • Required decoders:

    • AAC, Vorbis, Opus, Theora
    • H.264, VP9
    • pcm_s16le, pcm_s24le, pcm_s32le, pcm_f32le (All RM2K)

  • Required demuxers:

    • OGG, MP4, WAV (RM2K)

  • Required parsers:

    • AAC, H.264, VP9

Git Integration (ENABLE_LIBGIT2)

  • libgit2

Ruby Formatting (ENABLE_RUBY_FORMATTING)

  • libclang (library + headers only, not the full clang compiler toolchain)

rubyfmt's prism-sys build script uses bindgen against libclang to generate FFI bindings, so this flag needs the clang library and headers to be present even when the project itself is compiled entirely with GCC/MSVC. Install the distro's "clang library/headers" package (e.g. libclang-common-*-dev on Debian/Ubuntu, clang-devel on OpenSUSE, clang21-libclang/clang21-headers on Alpine) rather than the full clang compiler package where the distro distinguishes the two.

Feature flags without extra libraries

These CMake options gate individual Rust cargo features and don't require any additional system libraries - toggle them freely to trim the build:

  • Machine translation backends: ENABLE_GOOGLE_TRANSLATE, ENABLE_YANDEX_TRANSLATE, ENABLE_DEEPL, ENABLE_LLM_CONNECTOR (OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, Gemini, Mistral, Ollama, and other OpenAI-compatible/local providers).
  • Export/Import serde formats: ENABLE_SERDE_CSV, ENABLE_SERDE_XML, ENABLE_SERDE_XLSX, ENABLE_SERDE_YAML.
  • Glossary matching word segmentation/stemming backends: ENABLE_TOKENIZER_CHINESE_ICU, ENABLE_TOKENIZER_CHINESE_LINDERA, ENABLE_TOKENIZER_JAPANESE_ICU, ENABLE_TOKENIZER_JAPANESE_LINDERA, ENABLE_TOKENIZER_KOREAN_LINDERA, ENABLE_TOKENIZER_SNOWBALL, ENABLE_TOKENIZER_SOUTHEAST_ASIAN.

All of these default to ON, except the ICU-based tokenizers (ENABLE_TOKENIZER_CHINESE_ICU, ENABLE_TOKENIZER_JAPANESE_ICU), which default to OFF since the Lindera-based equivalents are enabled by default.

Getting development headers on Linux

Debian

Project's baseline is Debian 13 (Trixie). Check Ubuntu 24.04 build below, it's very different.

libqjs-dev (quickjs-ng) and libglaze-dev only exist in trixie-backports, not plain trixie - enable it first:

echo 'deb http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie-backports main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y \
  git cmake ninja-build g++ libclang1-19 libclang-common-19-dev \
  qt6-base-dev qt6-base-dev-tools qt6-tools-dev qt6-tools-dev-tools qt6-wayland-dev \
  qt6-l10n-tools qt6-svg-dev \
  libarchive-dev liblzma-dev \
  libgit2-dev libnuspell-dev libicu-dev \
  libqjs-dev libglaze-dev \
  pkg-config libssl-dev libkrb5-dev

OpenSUSE

Tumbleweed's repos only carry the original quickjs (quickjs-devel), not quickjs-ng . Build and install it from source instead:

git clone --depth 1 --branch v0.16.2 https://github.com/quickjs-ng/quickjs.git /tmp/quickjs-ng
cmake -G Ninja -B /tmp/quickjs-ng/build -S /tmp/quickjs-ng -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build /tmp/quickjs-ng/build -j
sudo cmake --install /tmp/quickjs-ng/build
rm -rf /tmp/quickjs-ng

sudo zypper refresh && sudo zypper install -y \
  git cmake ninja gcc-c++ clang-devel \
  qt6-base-devel qt6-linguist-devel qt6-tools-devel qt6-svg-devel qt6-wayland-devel \
  libarchive-devel xz-devel \
  libgit2-devel nuspell libicu-devel \
  glaze-devel \
  pkg-config libopenssl-devel libssh2-devel

Arch

sudo pacman -Syu --needed \
  git cmake ninja gcc clang glibc pkgconf \
  qt6-base qt6-tools qt6-svg qt6-wayland \
  openssl libarchive xz libgit2 nuspell icu ffmpeg \
  quickjs-ng glaze

Alpine

Alpine has some musl problem with ENABLE_RUBY_FORMATTING where it's unable to link libclang requires by the underlying prism-sys' build script, so I guess you have to work around this if you want a working build. Or just set ENABLE_RUBY_FORMATTING to OFF.

sudo apk update && sudo apk add \
  git cmake samurai g++ clang21-libclang clang21-headers \
  qt6-qtbase-dev qt6-qttools-dev qt6-qtsvg-dev qt6-qtwayland-dev \
  libarchive-dev xz-dev \
  libgit2-dev nuspell-dev icu-dev ffmpeg-dev \
  quickjs-ng-dev glaze \
  pkgconf openssl-dev \
  libunwind-dev

Ubuntu (AppImage)

The AppImage build targets Ubuntu 24.04 specifically for the widest compatibility. Its dependency list is more involved than the other distros: Qt 6.8.2 doesn't ship in the 24.04 repos so it's installed via aqtinstall, and quickjs-ng/glaze aren't packaged either so they're built from source. Rather than duplicating all of that here, follow the appimage-build stage in the Dockerfile step by step - it's kept as the single source of truth for this target.

At a minimum, expect to need:

sudo add-apt-repository universe && sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y \
  git cmake ninja-build libc6-dev dpkg-dev gcc-14 g++-14 libclang1-18 libclang-common-18-dev \
  python3-pip \
  libssl-dev libkrb5-dev \
  libarchive-dev libgit2-dev libnuspell-dev \
  libavutil-dev libavcodec-dev libavfilter-dev libavformat-dev libswresample-dev libswscale-dev \
  liblzma-dev libicu-dev \
  libgl1-mesa-dev libgles2-mesa-dev libegl1-mesa-dev \
  libfontconfig1-dev libfreetype6-dev \
  libx11-dev libxext-dev libxfixes-dev libxi-dev libxrender-dev \
  libxcb1-dev libxcb-cursor-dev libxcb-glx0-dev \
  libxcb-keysyms1-dev libxcb-image0-dev libxcb-shm0-dev \
  libxcb-icccm4-dev libxcb-sync-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev \
  libxcb-shape0-dev libxcb-randr0-dev libxcb-render-util0-dev \
  libxcb-xinerama0-dev libxcb-xkb-dev \
  libxkbcommon-dev libxkbcommon-x11-dev \
  libwayland-dev libwayland-egl-backend-dev \
  libdbus-1-dev \
  libfuse2 file patchelf

Qt itself, quickjs-ng, glaze, and the linuxdeploy/linuxdeploy-plugin-qt tooling still need to be installed/built separately - see the Dockerfile for the exact steps.

Dockerfile

You can find a Dockerfile in the root of repository that includes builds on aforementioned platforms plus the Ubuntu AppImage build, they're always guaranteed to succeed.

Configuring

configure.lua wraps CMake for better UX:

./lua configure.lua --fresh -G=Ninja CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

Available CMake options can be fetched through ./lua configure.lua --help.

Plain CMake works just as well if you prefer it.

Building

cmake --build build

Output lands in build/target/bin/.

Per-platform notes

Windows

For the details of how the libraries for the official static Windows build are compiled - check https://github.com/savannstm/personal, specifically - dev/build-dev-libraries scripts.

Linux

The Dockerfile builds reproducibly on five distributions/targets, each as its own stage:

docker build --target debian-build .
docker build --target opensuse-build .
docker build --target appimage-build .
docker build --target arch-build .
docker build --target alpine-build .

Each stage accepts a TARGET_ARCH build argument (default x86-64-v3) controlling the -march/-Ctarget-cpu value the C/C++/Rust code is compiled for:

docker build --target debian-build --build-arg TARGET_ARCH=x86-64-v2 .