The commands in this guide should be executed in a Terminal application. The built-in one is located in
/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
Install the macOS command line tools:
xcode-select --install
When the popup appears, click Install
.
Then install Homebrew.
brew install automake libtool boost miniupnpc pkg-config python qt libevent qrencode fmt
If you run into issues, check Homebrew's troubleshooting page. See dependencies.md for a complete overview.
If you want to build the disk image with make deploy
(.dmg / optional), you need RSVG:
brew install librsvg
The wallet support requires one or both of the dependencies (SQLite and Berkeley DB) in the sections below. To build Bitcoin Core without wallet, see Disable-wallet mode.
Usually, macOS installation already has a suitable SQLite installation. Also, the Homebrew package could be installed:
brew install sqlite
In that case the Homebrew package will prevail.
It is recommended to use Berkeley DB 4.8. If you have to build it yourself, you can use this script to install it like so:
./contrib/install_db4.sh .
from the root of the repository.
Also, the Homebrew package could be installed:
brew install berkeley-db4
-
Clone the Litecoin Core source code:
git clone https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin cd litecoin
-
Build Litecoin Core:
Configure and build the headless Litecoin Core binaries as well as the GUI (if Qt is found).
You can disable the GUI build by passing
--without-gui
to configure../autogen.sh ./configure make
-
It is recommended to build and run the unit tests:
make check
-
You can also create a
.dmg
that contains the.app
bundle (optional):make deploy
When the intention is to run only a P2P node without a wallet, Litecoin Core may be compiled in disable-wallet mode with:
./configure --disable-wallet
In this case there is no dependency on Berkeley DB and SQLite.
Mining is also possible in disable-wallet mode using the getblocktemplate
RPC call.
Litecoin Core is now available at ./src/litecoind
Before running, you may create an empty configuration file:
mkdir -p "/Users/${USER}/Library/Application Support/Litecoin"
touch "/Users/${USER}/Library/Application Support/Litecoin/litecoin.conf"
chmod 600 "/Users/${USER}/Library/Application Support/Litecoin/litecoin.conf"
The first time you run litecoind, it will start downloading the blockchain. This process could take many hours, or even days on slower than average systems.
You can monitor the download process by looking at the debug.log file:
tail -f $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/Litecoin/debug.log
./src/litecoind -daemon # Starts the litecoin daemon.
./src/litecoin-cli --help # Outputs a list of command-line options.
./src/litecoin-cli help # Outputs a list of RPC commands when the daemon is running.
- Tested on OS X 10.14 Mojave through macOS 11 Big Sur on 64-bit Intel processors only.
- Building with downloaded Qt binaries is not officially supported. See the notes in #7714.