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Building Zed for Linux

docs/src/development/linux.md

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Building Zed for Linux

Repository

Clone the Zed repository.

Dependencies

  • Install rustup

  • Install the necessary system libraries:

    sh
    script/linux

    If you prefer to install the system libraries manually, you can find the list of required packages in the script/linux file.

Linkers {#linker}

On Linux, Rust's default linker is LLVM's lld. Alternative linkers, especially Wild and Mold, can improve clean and incremental build times.

Zed currently uses Mold in CI because it is more mature. For local development, Wild is recommended because it is typically 5-20% faster than Mold.

These linkers can be installed with script/install-mold and script/install-wild.

To use Wild as your default, add these lines to your ~/.cargo/config.toml:

toml
[target.x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu]
linker = "clang"
rustflags = ["-C", "link-arg=--ld-path=wild"]

[target.aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu]
linker = "clang"
rustflags = ["-C", "link-arg=--ld-path=wild"]

To use Mold as your default:

toml
[target.'cfg(target_os = "linux")']
rustflags = ["-C", "link-arg=-fuse-ld=mold"]

Building from source

Once the dependencies are installed, you can build Zed using Cargo.

For a debug build of the editor:

sh
cargo run

And to run the tests:

sh
cargo test --workspace

In release mode, the primary user interface is the cli crate. You can run it in development with:

sh
cargo run -p cli

Installing a development build

You can install a local build on your machine with:

sh
./script/install-linux

This builds zed and the cli in release mode, installs the binary at ~/.local/bin/zed, and installs .desktop files to ~/.local/share.

Note: If you encounter linker errors similar to the following:

bash
error: linking with `cc` failed: exit status: 1 ...
= note: /usr/bin/ld: /tmp/rustcISMaod/libaws_lc_sys-79f08eb6d32e546e.rlib(f8e4fd781484bd36-bcm.o): in function `aws_lc_0_25_0_handle_cpu_env':
          /aws-lc/crypto/fipsmodule/cpucap/cpu_intel.c:(.text.aws_lc_0_25_0_handle_cpu_env+0x63): undefined reference to `__isoc23_sscanf'
          /usr/bin/ld: /tmp/rustcISMaod/libaws_lc_sys-79f08eb6d32e546e.rlib(f8e4fd781484bd36-bcm.o): in function `pkey_rsa_ctrl_str':
          /aws-lc/crypto/fipsmodule/evp/p_rsa.c:741:(.text.pkey_rsa_ctrl_str+0x20d): undefined reference to `__isoc23_strtol'
          /usr/bin/ld: /aws-lc/crypto/fipsmodule/evp/p_rsa.c:752:(.text.pkey_rsa_ctrl_str+0x258): undefined reference to `__isoc23_strtol'
          collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
  = note: some `extern` functions couldn't be found; some native libraries may need to be installed or have their path specified
  = note: use the `-l` flag to specify native libraries to link
  = note: use the `cargo:rustc-link-lib` directive to specify the native libraries to link with Cargo (see https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/build-scripts.html#rustc-link-lib)
error: could not compile `remote_server` (bin "remote_server") due to 1 previous error

Cause: This is caused by known bugs in aws-lc-rs (no GCC >= 14 support): FIPS fails to build with GCC >= 14 & GCC-14 - build failure for FIPS module

You can refer to linux: Linker error for remote_server when using script/install-linux for more information.

Workaround: Set the remote server target to x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu like so export REMOTE_SERVER_TARGET=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu; script/install-linux

Wayland & X11

Zed supports both X11 and Wayland. By default, we pick whichever we can find at runtime. If you're on Wayland and want to run in X11 mode, use the environment variable WAYLAND_DISPLAY=''.

Notes for packaging Zed

This section is for distribution maintainers packaging Zed.

Technical requirements

Zed has two main binaries:

  • You will need to build crates/cli and make its binary available in $PATH with the name zed.
  • You will need to build crates/zed and put it at $PATH/to/cli/../../libexec/zed-editor. For example, if you are going to put the cli at ~/.local/bin/zed put zed at ~/.local/libexec/zed-editor. As some linux distributions (notably Arch) discourage the use of libexec, you can also put this binary at $PATH/to/cli/../../lib/zed/zed-editor (e.g. ~/.local/lib/zed/zed-editor) instead.
  • If you are going to provide a .desktop file you can find a template in crates/zed/resources/zed.desktop.in, and use envsubst to populate it with the values required. This file should also be renamed to $APP_ID.desktop so that the file follows the FreeDesktop standards. You should also make this desktop file executable (chmod 755).
  • You will need to ensure that the necessary libraries are installed. You can get the current list by inspecting the built binary on your system.
  • For an example of a complete build script, see script/bundle-linux.
  • You can disable Zed's auto updates and provide instructions for users who try to update Zed manually by building (or running) Zed with the environment variable ZED_UPDATE_EXPLANATION. For example: ZED_UPDATE_EXPLANATION="Please use flatpak to update zed.".
  • Make sure to update the contents of the crates/zed/RELEASE_CHANNEL file to 'nightly', 'preview', or 'stable', with no newline. This will cause Zed to use the credentials manager to remember a user's login.

Other things to note

Zed moves quickly, and distribution maintainers often have different constraints and priorities. The points below describe current trade-offs:

  • Zed is a fast-moving project. We typically publish 2-3 builds per week to address reported issues and ship larger changes.
  • There are a couple of other zed binaries that may be present on Linux systems (1, 2). If you want to rename our CLI binary because of these issues, we suggest zedit, zeditor, or zed-cli.
  • Zed automatically installs versions of common developer tools, similar to rustup/rbenv/pyenv. This behavior is discussed here.
  • Users can install extensions locally and from zed-industries/extensions. Extensions may install additional tools such as language servers. Planned safety improvements are tracked here.
  • Zed connects to several online services by default (AI, telemetry, collaboration). AI and our telemetry can be disabled by your users with their zed settings or by patching our default settings file.
  • Because of the points above, Zed currently does not work well with sandboxes. See this discussion.

Flatpak

Zed's current Flatpak integration exits the sandbox on startup. Workflows that rely on Flatpak's sandboxing may not work as expected.

To build & install the Flatpak package locally follow the steps below:

  1. Install Flatpak for your distribution as outlined here.
  2. Run the script/flatpak/deps script to install the required dependencies.
  3. Run script/flatpak/bundle-flatpak.
  4. Now the package has been installed and has a bundle available at target/release/{app-id}.flatpak.

Memory profiling

heaptrack is quite useful for diagnosing memory leaks. To install it:

sh
$ sudo apt install heaptrack heaptrack-gui
$ cargo install cargo-heaptrack

Then, to build and run Zed with the profiler attached:

sh
$ cargo heaptrack -b zed

When this zed instance is exited, terminal output will include a command to run heaptrack_interpret to convert the *.raw.zst profile to a *.zst file which can be passed to heaptrack_gui for viewing.

Perf recording

How to get a flamegraph with resolved symbols from a running Zed instance. Use this when Zed is using a lot of CPU. It is not useful for hangs.

During the incident

  • Find the PID (process ID) using: ps -eo size,pid,comm | grep zed | sort | head -n 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 2 Or find the PID of zed-editor with the highest RAM usage in something like htop/btop/top.

  • Install perf: On Ubuntu (derivatives) run sudo apt install linux-tools.

  • Perf record: Run sudo perf record -p <pid you just found>, wait a few seconds to gather data, then press Ctrl+C. You should now have a perf.data file.

  • Make the output file user owned: run sudo chown $USER:$USER perf.data

  • Get build info: Run zed again and type zed: about in the command pallet to get the exact commit.

The perf.data file can be sent to Zed together with the exact commit.

Later

This can be done by Zed staff.

  • Build Zed with symbols: Check out the commit found previously and modify Cargo.toml. Apply the following diff, then make a release build.
diff
[profile.release]
-debug = "limited"
+debug = "full"

  • Add the symbols to the perf database: perf buildid-cache -v -a <path to release zed binary>

  • Resolve the symbols from the db: perf inject -i perf.data -o perf_with_symbols.data

  • Install flamegraph: cargo install cargo-flamegraph

  • Render the flamegraph: flamegraph --perfdata perf_with_symbols.data

Troubleshooting

Cargo errors claiming that a dependency is using unstable features

Try cargo clean and cargo build.