Build from source

Building Nimbus from source creates a binary specifically optimized for the hardware that you're running on. The build process itself is simple and fully automated, but may take a few minutes.

Nim

Nimbus is written in the Nim programming language. The correct version will automatically be downloaded as part of the build process!

Prerequisites

Make sure you have all needed build prerequisites.

Building the node

1. Clone the nimbus-eth2 repository

git clone https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2
cd nimbus-eth2

2. Run the beacon node build process

To build the Nimbus beacon node and its dependencies, run:

make -j4 nimbus_beacon_node

This step can take several minutes. After it has finished, you can check if the installation was successful by running:

build/nimbus_beacon_node --help

If you see the command-line options, your installation was successful! Otherwise, don't hesitate to reach out to us in the #helpdesk channel of our discord.

Low memory systems

Omit -j4 on systems with 12GB of memory or less.

Portable builds

To make the build portable, such that in can run on other hardware than the build machine, run make -j4 NIMFLAGS=-d:disableMarchNative nimbus_beacon_node instead

Keeping Nimbus updated

When you decide to upgrade Nimbus to a newer version, make sure to follow the keeping updated guide.