Build Instructions#

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 the dist/ directory (electron-builder output);
# the intermediate electron-vite bundles live in out/

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). You also need the spectre-mitigated MSVC libs — see developer README §1.3 for the exact components to install.

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.