Project: Weave Net (Runtime / Cloud Native Network)
File: building.md

title: Building Weave Net menu_order: 220 search_type: Documentation You only need to build Weave Net if you want to work on the Weave Net codebase (or you just enjoy building software). Apart from the `weave` shell script, Weave Net is delivered as a set of container images. There is no distribution-specific packaging, so in principle it shouldn't matter which Linux distribution you build under. But naturally, Docker is a prerequisite (version 1.6.0 or later). The only way to build is by using the the build container; the `Makefile` is setup to make this transparent. This method is documented below, and can be run directly on your machine or using a Vagrant VM. The weave git repository should be cloned into `$GOPATH/src/github.com/weaveworks/weave`, in accordance with [the Go workspace conventions](https://golang.org/doc/code.html#Workspaces): ``` $ WEAVE=github.com/weaveworks/weave $ git clone https://$WEAVE $GOPATH/src/$WEAVE $ cd $GOPATH/src/$WEAVE $ git submodule update --init ``` Next install Docker if you haven't already, by following the instructions . Then to actually build, simply do: ``` $ make ``` On a fresh repository, the Makefile will do the following: assemble the build container download specific versions of all the dependencies build the weave components in the build container package them into two Docker images (`weaveworks/weave`, `weaveworks/weaveexec`) export these images as `weave.tar.gz`. The first two steps may take a while - don't worry, they are are cached and should not need to be redone very often. If you aren't running Linux, or otherwise don't want to run the Docker daemon outside a VM, you can use to run a development environment. You'll probably need to install too, for Vagrant to run VMs in. First, check out the code: ``` $ git clone https://github.com/weaveworks/weave $ cd weave $ git submodule update --init ``` The `Vagrantfile` in the top directory constructs a VM that has: Docker installed Go tools installed Weave's dependencies installed `$GOPATH` set to `~` the local working directory mapped as a synced folder into the right place in `$GOPATH`. Once you are in the working directory you can issue: ``` $ vagrant up ``` and wait for a while (don't worry, the long download and package installation is done just once). The working directory is sync'ed with `~/src/github.com/weaveworks/weave` on the VM, so you can edit files and use git and so on in the regular filesystem. To build and run the code, you need to use the VM. To log in and build the weave image, do: ``` $ vagrant ssh vm$ cd src/github.com/weaveworks/weave vm$ make ``` The Docker daemon is also running in this VM, so you can then do: ``` vm$ sudo ./weave launch vm$ sudo docker ps ``` and so on. If you are looking to just do a build and not run anything on this VM, you can do so with: ``` $ vagrant ssh -c 'make -C src/github.com/weaveworks/weave' ``` you should then find a `weave.tar.gz` container snapshot tarball in the top-level directory. You can use that snapshot with `docker load` against a different host, e.g.: ``` $ export DOCKER_HOST=tcp://<HOST:PORT> $ docker load < weave.tar.gz ``` You can provide extra Vagrant configuration by putting a file `Vagrant.local` in the same place as `Vagrantfile`; for instance, to forward additional ports.