Building for Linux

An unofficial PKGBUILD of Citra is available for Arch Linux on the AUR.

Dependencies:

You’ll need to download and install the following to build Citra:

  • SDL2

    • Deb: sudo apt install libsdl2-dev
    • Arch: pacman -S sdl2
    • Fedora: sudo dnf install SDL2-devel
    • OpenSUSE: zypper in libSDL2-devel

  • OpenSSL (optional)

    • Deb: sudo apt install libssl-dev
    • Arch: pacman -S openssl-1.0
    • Fedora: sudo dnf install openssl-devel
    • OpenSUSE: zypper in openssl-devel

  • Qt 6.2+

    • Only 6.2+ versions are tested. Lower version might or might not work. See the section Install new Qt version below if your distro does not provide a sufficient version of Qt
    • Deb: sudo apt install qt6-base-dev qt6-base-private-dev qt6-multimedia-dev
      • You may also need apt install qt6-l10n-tools qt6-tools-dev qt6-tools-dev-tools to build with translation support
      • You may also need apt install libgl-dev if you run into WrapOpenGL issues while configuring with CMake.
    • Arch: pacman -S qt6-base qt6-multimedia qt6-multimedia-ffmpeg
      • You will also need to install a multimedia backend, either qt6-multimedia-ffmpeg or qt6-multimedia-gstreamer.
    • Fedora: sudo dnf install qt6-qtbase-devel qt6-qtbase-private-devel qt6-qtmultimedia-devel
    • OpenSUSE: zypper in qt6-base qt6-multimedia

  • PORTAUDIO

    • Deb: sudo apt install libasound-dev
    • Fedora: sudo dnf install portaudio-devel
    • OpenSUSE Leap 15: zypper in portaudio-devel
    • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed: zypper in portaudio-devel

  • XORG

    • Deb: sudo apt install xorg-dev libx11-dev libxext-dev
    • Fedora: sudo dnf install xorg-x11-server-devel libX11-devel libXext-devel
    • OpenSUSE Leap 15: zypper in xorg-x11-util-devel libX11-devel libXext-devel
    • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed: zypper in xorg-x11-util-devel libX11-devel libXext-devel

  • JACK Audio Connection Kit

    • Deb: sudo apt install jackd
    • Fedora: sudo dnf install jack-audio-connection-kit-devel
    • OpenSUSE Leap 15: zypper in libjack-devel
    • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed: zypper in libjack-devel

  • PipeWire

    • Deb: sudo apt install libpipewire-0.3-dev
    • Fedora: sudo dnf install pipewire-devel
    • OpenSUSE Leap 15: zypper in pipewire-devel
    • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed: zypper in pipewire-devel

  • Vulkan SDK

    • Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish) 
      wget -qO- https://packages.lunarg.com/lunarg-signing-key-pub.asc | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/lunarg.asc
sudo wget -qO /etc/apt/sources.list.d/lunarg-vulkan-jammy.list http://packages.lunarg.com/vulkan/lunarg-vulkan-jammy.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vulkan-sdk
    • Users on other distros can follow the official guide

  • Optional dependencies needed for HLE AAC Decoding on Linux

    • FFMPEG 4.0+
      • Deb: sudo apt install ffmpeg libswscale-dev libavformat-dev libavcodec-dev libavdevice-dev
      • Fedora: dnf install ffmpeg-devel compat-ffmpeg4
      • OpenSUSE Leap 15: zypper in ffmpeg-3 ffmpeg-3-libavcodec-devel
      • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed: zypper in ffmpeg-4 ffmpeg-4-libavcodec-devel

  • Optional dependencies

  • sndio

    • Deb: sudo apt install libsndio-dev
    • Fedora: sudo dnf -y copr enable andykimpe/shadow && sudo dnf -y install sndio
    • OpenSUSE Leap 15: zypper in sndio-devel
    • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed: zypper in sndio-devel

  • Optional dependencies

  • Gnome esound

    • Deb: echo "esound require build use source code https://download.gnome.org/sources/esound/"
    • Fedora: sudo dnf install esound-devel
    • OpenSUSE Leap 15: zypper in libesd0-devel
    • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed: zypper in libesd0-devel

  • Compiler: GCC or Clang. You only need one of these two:

    • GCC 11.0+.
      • Deb: apt install build-essential
      • Arch: pacman -S base-devel
      • Fedora: dnf install gcc-c++
      • OpenSUSE: zypper in gcc-c++
    • Clang 15.0+
      • Deb: apt install clang clang-format libc++-dev
        • Note for Ubuntu users: Clang 15 is available only from 22.10 onward. For earlier distro versions, see: https://apt.llvm.org/
      • Arch: pacman -S clang, libc++ is in the AUR. Use pacaur or yaourt to install it.
      • Fedora: dnf install clang libcxx-devel
      • OpenSUSE: zypper in clang

  • CMake 3.20+

    • Deb: apt install cmake
    • Arch: pacman -S cmake
    • Fedora: dnf install cmake
    • OpenSUSE: zypper in cmake extra-cmake-modules

  • Note on Boost library: you don’t need to install Boost library on your system, because citra provides a bundled trimmed Boost library. However, if you already have Boost library installed on your system, please make sure its version is at least 1.66 (which contains a bug fix for GCC 7), otherwise compilation would fail.

Cloning Citra in Git:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/citra-emu/citra
cd citra

The --recursive option automatically clones the required Git submodules too.

Building Citra in Debug Mode (Slow):

Using gcc:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
cmake --build . -- -j"$(nproc)"
sudo make install (optional)

Optionally, you can use “cmake -i ..” to adjust various options (e.g. disable the Qt GUI).

Using clang:

Note: It is important you use libc++, otherwise your build will likely fail:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++-5.0 \
	-DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang-5.0 \
	-DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-O2 -g -stdlib=libc++"
cmake --build . -- -j"$(nproc)"
sudo make install (optional)

If you get a weird compile error related to std::span conversions, make sure you are using clang and libc++ 15 or up. This is an issue with libc++ 14.

Building Citra in Release Mode (Optimized):

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build . -- -j"$(nproc)"
sudo make install (optional)

Building with debug symbols:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo
cmake --build . -- -j"$(nproc)"
sudo make install (optional)

Running without installing:

After building, the binaries citra, citra-qt and citra-room (depending on your build options) will end up in build/bin/.

# SDL
cd build/bin/
./citra

# Qt
cd build/bin/
./citra-qt

# Dedicated room
cd build/bin/
./citra-room

Debugging:

cd data
gdb ../build/bin/citra-qt
(gdb) run

(gdb) bt

Install new Qt version

If your distribution’s version of Qt is too old, there are a few places you may be able to find newer versions.