Building Lynx Explorer for macOS

This document provides instructions for building the Lynx Explorer macOS app from source.

System Requirements

• 100GB or more of disk space
• Git/Python3(>=3.9) installed
• Node.js(>=18) installed

Install Dependencies

The following dependencies are needed:

• Xcode(>=15.0)

Xcode

Lynx requires Xcode 15.0 or later. It is recommended to keep Xcode up to date. You can install or update it on the App Store.

• Open Xcode->Settings->Locations, to make sure the Command Line Tools are configured
• You can run xcode-select -p in the terminal, and if it prints a correct path, it's configure successfully.

Get the Source Code

Pull the Repository

Pull the code from the Github repository.

git clone https://github.com/lynx-family/lynx.git

Install Third-party Library

Run the following commands from the root of the repository to install the dependencies.

cd lynx
source tools/envsetup.sh
tools/hab sync . --target clay

Build Lynx Explorer

Run the following commands from the root of the repository to build the LynxExplorer app.

buildtools/gn/gn gen out/Default --args='desktop_enable_embedder_layer = true enable_clay_standalone = true disable_visibility_hidden = true use_ndk_static_cxx = false enable_linker_map = false enable_clay = true is_headless = true skia_enable_flutter_defines = true skia_use_dng_sdk = false skia_use_sfntly = false skia_enable_pdf = false skia_enable_svg = true enable_svg = true skia_enable_skottie = true skia_use_x11 = false skia_use_wuffs = true skia_use_expat = true skia_use_fontconfig = false clay_enable_skshaper = true skia_use_icu = true skia_gl_standard = "" skia_use_metal = true shell_enable_metal = true allow_deprecated_api_calls = true stripped_symbols = true is_official_build = true use_clang_static_analyzer = false enable_lto = false enable_lepusng_worklet = true enable_napi_binding = true enable_inspector = true jsengine_type="quickjs" use_flutter_cxx = false is_debug = false' --ide=xcode
buildtools/ninja/ninja -C out/Default explorer

Or, you can run the following command to build the LynxSDK if you need. This will generate lynx_sdk_macos_${target_cpu}.zip in out/Default directory.

buildtools/ninja/ninja -C out/Default platform/darwin/macos:package_sdk

Run and Debug

After the build is completed, LynxExplorer.app is located in the out/Default directory. Double-click to run it.

Debug with Xcode

Run the gn gen command with param --ide=xcode, all.xcodeproj will be generated in dictionary out/Default.

1. Open all.xcodeproj by Xcode
2. Select lynx_explorer to build and run.