1. Prerequisites
   1. Source Code
   2. Rust Compiler
   3. Dependencies
      1. Debian/Ubuntu
      2. Arch Linux
      3. Fedora
      4. CentOS/RHEL 7
      5. openSUSE
      6. Slackware
      7. Void Linux
      8. FreeBSD
      9. OpenBSD
      10. Solus
      11. NixOS/Nixpkgs
      12. Gentoo
      13. Windows
      14. Clear Linux
      15. Other
2. Building
   1. Linux/Windows
      1. Desktop Entry
   2. MacOS
   3. Cargo
   4. Debian/Ubuntu
3. Manual Page
4. Shell Completions
   1. Zsh
   2. Bash
   3. Fish
5. Terminfo

Before compiling Alacritty, you'll have to first clone the source code:

git clone https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty.git
cd alacritty

1. Install rustup.rs.

2. To make sure you have the right Rust compiler installed, run

   rustup override set stable
   rustup update stable

These are the minimum dependencies required to build Alacritty, please note that with some setups additional dependencies might be desired.

If you're running Wayland with an Nvidia GPU, you'll likely want the EGL drivers installed too (these are called libegl1-mesa-dev on Ubuntu).

You can build alacritty using cargo deb and use your system's package manager to maintain the application using the instructions below.

If you'd still like to build a local version manually, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's an apt command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.

apt-get install cmake pkg-config libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig1-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev python3

On Arch Linux, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a pacman command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.

pacman -S cmake freetype2 fontconfig pkg-config make libxcb

On Fedora, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a dnf command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.

dnf install cmake freetype-devel fontconfig-devel libxcb-devel

On CentOS/RHEL 7, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a yum command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.

yum install cmake freetype-devel fontconfig-devel
yum group install "Development Tools"

On openSUSE, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a zypper command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.

zypper install cmake freetype-devel fontconfig-devel libxcb-devel

Compiles out of the box for 14.2

On Void Linux, install following packages before compiling Alacritty:

xbps-install cmake freetype-devel expat-devel fontconfig-devel libxcb-devel pkg-config python3

On FreeBSD, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a pkg command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.

pkg install cmake freetype2 fontconfig pkgconf

On OpenBSD 6.5, you need Xenocara and Rust to build Alacritty, plus Python 3 to build its XCB dependency. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.

pkg_add rust python

Select the package for Python 3 (e.g. python-3.6.8p0) when prompted.

The default user limits in OpenBSD are insufficient to build Alacritty. A datasize-cur of at least 3GB is recommended (see login.conf).

On Solus, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a eopkg command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.

eopkg install fontconfig-devel

The following command can be used to get a shell with all development dependencies on NixOS.

nix-shell -A alacritty '<nixpkgs>'

On Gentoo, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. The following command should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.

emerge --onlydeps x11-terms/alacritty

On windows you will need to have the {architecture}-pc-windows-msvc toolchain installed as well as Clang 3.9 or greater.

On Clear Linux, you need a few extra libraries to build Alacritty. Here's a swupd command that should install all of them. If something is still found to be missing, please open an issue.

swupd bundle-add devpkg-expat devpkg-freetype devpkg-libxcb

If you build Alacritty on another distribution, we would love some help filling in this section of the README.

Once all the prerequisites are installed, compiling Alacritty should be easy:

cargo build --release

If all goes well, this should place a binary at target/release/alacritty. On Windows this directory should also contain the winpty-agent.exe.

Many linux distributions support desktop entries for adding applications to system menus. To install the desktop entry for Alacritty, run

sudo cp target/release/alacritty /usr/local/bin # or anywhere else in $PATH
sudo cp extra/logo/alacritty-term.svg /usr/share/pixmaps/Alacritty.svg
sudo desktop-file-install extra/linux/alacritty.desktop
sudo update-desktop-database

To build an application for macOS, run

make app
cp -r target/release/osx/Alacritty.app /Applications/

If you don't want to clone the repository, you can install Alacritty directly using cargo:

cargo install --git https://github.com/jwilm/alacritty

Using cargo deb, you can create and install a deb file.

cargo install cargo-deb
cargo deb --install --manifest-path alacritty/Cargo.toml

To choose a default terminal app, use Debian's update-alternatives.

update-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulator

Installing the manual page requires the additional dependency gzip. To install the manual page, run

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/share/man/man1
gzip -c extra/alacritty.man | sudo tee /usr/local/share/man/man1/alacritty.1.gz > /dev/null

To get automatic completions for alacritty's flags and arguments you can install the provided shell completions.

To install the completions for zsh, you can place the extra/completions/_alacritty file in any directory referenced by $fpath.

If you do not already have such a directory registered through your ~/.zshrc, you can add one like this:

mkdir -p ${ZDOTDIR:-~}/.zsh_functions
echo 'fpath+=${ZDOTDIR:-~}/.zsh_functions' >> ${ZDOTDIR:-~}/.zshrc

Then copy the completion file to this directory:

cp extra/completions/_alacritty ${ZDOTDIR:-~}/.zsh_functions/_alacritty

To install the completions for bash, you can source the extra/completions/alacritty.bash file in your ~/.bashrc file.

If you do not plan to delete the source folder of alacritty, you can run

echo "source $(pwd)/extra/completions/alacritty.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

Otherwise you can copy it to the ~/.bash_completion folder and source it from there:

mkdir -p ~/.bash_completion
cp extra/completions/alacritty.bash ~/.bash_completion/alacritty
echo "source ~/.bash_completion/alacritty" >> ~/.bashrc

To install the completions for fish, run

mkdir -p $fish_complete_path[1]
cp extra/completions/alacritty.fish $fish_complete_path[1]/alacritty.fish

The terminfo database contains entries describing the terminal emulator's capabilities. Programs need these in order to function properly.

Alacritty should work with the standard xterm-256color definition, but to allow programs to make best use of alacritty's capabilities, use its own terminfo definition instead.

Unless the user has set the TERM environment variable in the alacritty configuration, the alacritty terminfo definition will be used if it has been installed. If not, then xterm-256color is used instead.

To install alacritty's terminfo entry globally:

sudo tic -xe alacritty,alacritty-direct extra/alacritty.info