These instructions are for setting up dependencies and building Wave Terminal from source on macOS, Linux, and Windows.
See Minimum requirements to learn whether your OS is supported.
macOS does not have any platform-specific dependencies.
You must have zip installed. We also require the Zig compiler for statically linking CGO.
Debian/Ubuntu:
sudo apt install zip snapd
sudo snap install zig --classic --betaFedora/RHEL:
sudo dnf install zip zigArch:
sudo pacman -S zip zigFor packaging, the following additional packages are required:
fpm— If you're on x64 you can skip this. If you're on ARM64, install fpm via Gemrpm— If you're not on Fedora, install RPM via your package manager.snapd— If your distro doesn't already include it, installsnapdlxd— Installation instructionssnapcraft— Runsudo snap install snapcraft --classiclibarchive-tools— Install via your package managerbinutils— Install via your package managerlibopenjp2-tools— Install via your package managersquashfs-tools— Install via your package manager
You will need the Zig compiler for statically linking CGO.
You can find installation instructions for Zig on Windows here.
Download and install Task (to run the build commands): https://taskfile.dev/installation/
Task is a modern equivalent to GNU Make. We use it to coordinate our build steps. You can find our full Task configuration in Taskfile.yml.
Download and install Go via your package manager or directly from the website: https://go.dev/doc/install
Make sure you have a NodeJS 22 LTS installed.
See NodeJS's website for platform-specific instructions: https://nodejs.org/en/download
We now use npm, so you can just run an npm install to install node dependencies.
git clone git@github.com:wavetermdev/waveterm.gitor
git clone https://github.com/wavetermdev/waveterm.gitThe first time you clone the repo, you'll need to run the following to load the dependencies. If you ever have issues building the app, try running this again:
task initAll the methods below will install Node and Go dependencies when they run the first time. All these should be run from within the Git repository.
Run the following command to build the app and run it via Vite's development server (this enables Hot Module Reloading):
task devRun the following command to build the app and run it standalone, without the development server. This will not reload on change:
task startRun the following command to generate a production build and package it. This lets you install the app locally. All artifacts will be placed in make/.
task packageIf you're on Linux ARM64, run the following:
USE_SYSTEM_FPM=1 task packageYou can use the regular Chrome DevTools to debug the frontend application. You can open the DevTools using the keyboard shortcut Cmd+Option+I on macOS or Ctrl+Option+I on Linux and Windows. Logs will be sent to the Console tab in DevTools.
Backend logs for the development version of Wave can be found at ~/.waveterm-dev/waveapp.log. Both the NodeJS backend from Electron and the main Go backend will log here.