Build from source

!!! warning "Community documentation"

This page is not actively maintained by the headscale authors and is
written by community members. It is _not_ verified by headscale developers.

**It might be outdated and it might miss necessary steps**.

Headscale can be built from source using the latest version of Go. See the Contributing section in the GitHub README for more information.

OpenBSD

Install from source

shell

# Install prerequisites
pkg_add go git

git clone https://github.com/juanfont/headscale.git

cd headscale

# optionally checkout a release
# option a. you can find official release at https://github.com/juanfont/headscale/releases/latest
# option b. get latest tag, this may be a beta release
latestTag=$(git describe --tags `git rev-list --tags --max-count=1`)

git checkout $latestTag

go build -ldflags="-s -w -X github.com/juanfont/headscale/hscontrol/types.Version=$latestTag" -X github.com/juanfont/headscale/hscontrol/types.GitCommitHash=HASH" github.com/juanfont/headscale

# make it executable
chmod a+x headscale

# copy it to /usr/local/sbin
cp headscale /usr/local/sbin

Install from source via cross compile

shell

# Install prerequisites
# 1. go v1.20+: headscale newer than 0.21 needs go 1.20+ to compile
# 2. gmake: Makefile in the headscale repo is written in GNU make syntax

git clone https://github.com/juanfont/headscale.git

cd headscale

# optionally checkout a release
# option a. you can find official release at https://github.com/juanfont/headscale/releases/latest
# option b. get latest tag, this may be a beta release
latestTag=$(git describe --tags `git rev-list --tags --max-count=1`)

git checkout $latestTag

make build GOOS=openbsd

# copy headscale to openbsd machine and put it in /usr/local/sbin