Build Instructions

Please see this issue for updates on our efforts to modernize this process!

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/marktext/marktext.git

Container Setup

The easiest way to build Marktext on Linux is from inside a container. Here are the steps for doing so:

# cd to marktext repository

# run container (you can use docker instead of podman if you like)
podman run -it -v ./:/mnt:Z node:22-bookworm /bin/bash
# you should now be interacting with the container

# add bookworm-backports for Python 3.12 and install build dependencies
echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
apt update
apt-get install -y -t bookworm-backports python3.12
apt-get install -y libx11-dev libxkbfile-dev libsecret-1-dev libfontconfig-dev rpm

cd /mnt
corepack enable
pnpm install
pnpm run build

exit
# container should now be terminated

# build artifacts can be found in out directory

Below are the complete build instructions, which may help you troubleshoot the above or attempt to build for other platforms.

Prerequisites

Before you can get started developing, you need set up your build environment:

• Node.js >=20.19.0 and pnpm >=10
• Python >=3.12 for node-gyp
• C++ compiler and development tools
• Build is supported on Linux, macOS and Windows

Additional development dependencies on Linux:

• libX11 (with headers)
• libxkbfile (with headers)
• libsecret (with headers)
• libfontconfig (with headers)
• rpm (if building on Debian)

On Debian-based Linux: sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libxkbfile-dev libsecret-1-dev libfontconfig-dev rpm

On Red Hat-based Linux: sudo dnf install libX11-devel libxkbfile-devel libsecret-devel fontconfig-devel

On Arch Linux: sudo pacman -S libx11 libxkbfile libsecret fontconfig

Additional development dependencies on Windows:

• Windows 10 SDK (only needed before Windows 10)
• Visual Studio 2022 (Build Tools for Visual Studio 2022 — see developer README §1.3)

Let's build

1. Go to marktext folder
2. Install dependencies: pnpm install
3. Build MarkText binaries and packages: pnpm run build
4. MarkText binary is located under dist folder (electron-builder output)

Copy the build app to applications folder, or if on Windows run the executable installer.

Important scripts

$ pnpm run <script>

For more scripts please see package.json.

[!TIP] To improve efficiency during development:

1. Use pnpm run dev for development mode. This will automatically reload the window when source code is modified.
2. Use Ctrl+R to manually reload the application in development mode if needed.

This approach bypasses unnecessary rebuilds and optimizes the developer workflow. However, for CI or release builds, a full rebuild may still be necessary.