What is CodeLite?

CodeLite is a free, open source, cross platform IDE specialized in C, C++, PHP and JavaScript (mainly for backend developers using Node.js) programming languages, which runs best on all major platforms (Windows, macOS and Linux).

You can download pre-built binaries for Windows, macOS and Linux from our Download Page.

More information can be found here:

• Official Website
• Download Page
• Wiki

Building CodeLite on Linux

To build CodeLite on your computer you will need these packages:

• wxWidgets 3.1 or later development packages (or a self-build).
• The GTK development packages: often called libgtk-3-dev or gtk3-devel, or similar.
• pkg-config (which usually comes with the GTK dev package).
• The build-essential package (or the relevant bit of it: G++, Make etc).
• cmake.
• git.

In the Debian/Ubuntu repositories, wxWidgets libraries are at their 3.0 version, which is good enough for compiling Codelite 15.0, however, you should have wxWidgets 3.1 or later to built the master branch on your machine. If you don't know how to build wxWidgets (or you're just lazy...) you can add the CodeLite's wxWidgets repository to you distro.

Ubuntu / Debian: After adding the proper libraries to you distro's sources, you can install all of the above by typing:

sudo apt install pkg-config build-essential git cmake libgtk-3-dev libssh-dev libsqlite3-dev libwxbase3.1-dev libwxbase3.1unofficial3-dev libwxgtk3.1unofficial3-dev

Git clone the sources:

git clone https://github.com/eranif/codelite.git

Run CMake and build CodeLite:

cd codelite
mkdir build-release
cd build-release
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build . -j $(nproc)
sudo cmake --build . --target install

Building CodeLite on macOS

Prerequisites:

• wxWidgets 3.1 or later
• CMake
• Git
• Xcode
• Xcode command-line tools
• Homebrew.

Preparation:

• (Optional) Make a separate folder for building if you want to get rid of all except the .app file after building
• Install Xcode from Mac App Store
• Install Xcode command-line tools: xcode-select --install
• Install Homebrew:

 ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

• Update Homebrew: brew update
• (Optional) Upgrade Homebrew packages: brew upgrade
• Install Git: brew install git
• Install CMake: brew install cmake
• Install wxWidgets: brew install wxmac --dev --use-llvm

Clone the repo (lets assume that you have a folder /Users/YOU/src)

cd /Users/YOU/src
git clone https://github.com/eranif/codelite.git

the above will create the folder /Users/YOU/codelite

To build CodeLite:

cd /Users/YOU/codelite
mkdir build-release
cd build-release
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build . -j $(sysctl -n hw.physicalcpu)
cmake --build . --target install

You should now have an app bundle /Users/YOU/codelite/build-release/codelite.app

To launch CodeLite:

open /Users/YOU/codelite/build-release/codelite.app

Building CodeLite on Windows

Git clone the sources:

git clone https://github.com/eranif/codelite.git

• Download CodeLite installer for Windows from our Download Page
• Build wxWidgets 3.1 or later. See build instructions here
• Open the workspace CodeLiteIDE.workspace (located in the CodeLite's folder)
• Make sure that the project CodeLiteIDE is selected (the active project uses bold font)
• Select the Win_x64_Release or Win_x86_Release (depending if you want to build a 32 or 64 bit version of CodeLite) and hit F7
• When the compilation is over, close the workspace
• Close CodeLite
• To update your installation with the new CodeLite, close CodeLite and from a cmd.exe window navigate to codelite-sources/Runtime/ and run the file update64.bat OR update.bat (again, depending on your selected arch).