Linux installation

Clone the Github Repository

Install git:

sudo apt install git

Create the development directory in your home directory and clone the repository.

Note: instead of cloning https://github.com/cyberbotics/webots.git, we recommend to create your own fork and clone it, so that you can commit your changes directly on it.

git config --global credential.helper store
git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global push.default simple
git clone --recurse-submodules -j8 https://github.com/cyberbotics/webots.git
cd webots

Install Prerequisites Packages

The Webots dependencies can be installed with the following script:

sudo scripts/install/linux_compilation_dependencies.sh

Note that this installation script is guarantee to work only on the two latest Ubuntu LTS releases. For error on other Linux distributions please refer to this section.

If you are using a headless system, then you also have to install xvfb to compile and run Webots:

sudo apt install xvfb

Setup your bash profile

Check the content of scripts/install/bashrc.linux, adapt the paths to match your system setup, and append it at the end of your ~/.bashrc:

cat scripts/install/bashrc.linux >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Install Optional Dependencies [ optional ]

If needed, follow these instructions to install optional dependencies.

Build Webots

Compile Webots and automatically download the required resources in the dependencies folder:

make -jX

Note: X represents the number of threads for a speedy multi-threaded compilation. For example, type make -j12 on a CPU with four cores and hyper-threading.

make help displays additional targets for debugging, profiling, cleaning, etc.

Once compiled, type ./webots to launch it.

Building on a system different than Ubuntu LTS

All the provided dependencies installation scripts are guarantee to work only on the two latest Ubuntu LTS. If you are using a different Linux distribution, you should carefully check the error messages: it may be necessary to modify the installation script to skip some packages not available on your distribution and manually install other missing dependencies.

In particular, the compilation would automatically try to build the Python API for all the Python versions found on the system and it may be necessary to manually install the corresponding pythonX-dev packages or manually disable the compilation in the src/controller/Makefile.