View source for Development setup

This guide describes how to build btrfs from (the Linux kernel) sources and prepare a development environment, if you are interested in testing or modifying btrfs code.

= Compiling btrfs from sources =

== Download ==

Download the latest utility programs and modules following [[Btrfs_source_repositories|these instructions]]

For distribution-specific packages of the latest kernel or tools, please see the support links in the table above.

== Compiling the kernel support ==

Btrfs uses libcrc32c in the kernel for file and metadata checksums and zlib to compress data. The necessary options are automatically selected when you select to compile btrfs: CONFIG_LIBCRC32C, CONFIG_ZLIB_INFLATE and CONFIG_ZLIB_DEFLATE.

== Compiling the userspace utilities ==

The Btrfs utility programs require libuuid to build. This can be found in the e2fsprogs sources, and is usually available as libuuid, uuid-dev or e2fsprogs-devel from various distros. You also need the zlib development headers, usually available in a package called zlib-devel or zlib1g-dev.

Building the ext3 conversion tools requires libe2fs (usually available in e2fsprogs-devel or e2fslibs-dev) and libacl (may be available in libacl1-dev).

Building the utilities is just ''make''. If you would also like the ext3 conversion program, type ''make convert''.

''make install'' will copy the programs into /usr/local/bin