Installation from source

You should install go and set up your go environment correctly. In particular, it is recommended to set the $GOPATH environment variable and to add the go bin directory or directories ${GOPATH//://bin:}/bin to the $PATH. See the Go wiki entry for GOPATH.

Next, install Node.js with npm which is required to build the JavaScript and CSS files. The minimum supported Node.js version is 18 and the latest LTS version is recommended.

Download​

First, we must retrieve the source code. Since, the advent of go modules, the simplest way of doing this is to use Git directly as we no longer have to have Gitea built from within the GOPATH.

git clone https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea

(Previous versions of this document recommended using go get. This is no longer necessary.)

Decide which version of Gitea to build and install. Currently, there are multiple options to choose from. The main branch represents the current development version. To build with main, skip to the build section.

To work with tagged releases, the following commands can be used:

git branch -a
git checkout main

To validate a Pull Request, first enable the new branch (xyz is the PR id; for example 2663 for #2663):

git fetch origin pull/xyz/head:pr-xyz

To build Gitea from source at a specific tagged release (like main), list the available tags and check out the specific tag.

List available tags with the following.

git tag -l
git checkout main  # or git checkout pr-xyz

Build​

To build from source, the following programs must be present on the system:

• go 1.22 or higher, see here
• node 18 or higher with npm, see here
• make, see here

Various make tasks are provided to keep the build process as simple as possible.

Depending on requirements, the following build tags can be included.

• bindata: Build a single monolithic binary, with all assets included. Required for production build.
• sqlite sqlite_unlock_notify: Enable support for a SQLite3 database. Suggested only for tiny installations.
• pam: Enable support for PAM (Linux Pluggable Authentication Modules). Can be used to authenticate local users or extend authentication to methods available to PAM.
• gogit: (EXPERIMENTAL) Use go-git variants of Git commands.

Bundling all assets (JS/CSS/templates, etc) into the binary. Using the bindata build tag is required for production deployments. You could exclude bindata when you are developing/testing Gitea or able to separate the assets correctly.

To include all assets, use the bindata tag:

TAGS="bindata" make build

In the default release build of our continuous integration system, the build tags are: TAGS="bindata sqlite sqlite_unlock_notify". The simplest recommended way to build from source is therefore:

TAGS="bindata sqlite sqlite_unlock_notify" make build

The build target is split into two sub-targets:

• make backend which requires Go 1.22 or greater.
• make frontend which requires Node.js 18 or greater.

If pre-built frontend files are present it is possible to only build the backend:

TAGS="bindata" make backend

Test​

After following the steps above, a gitea binary will be available in the working directory. It can be tested from this directory or moved to a directory with test data. When Gitea is launched manually from command line, it can be killed by pressing Ctrl + C.

./gitea web

Changing default paths​

Gitea will search for a number of things from the CustomPath. By default this is the custom/ directory in the current working directory when running Gitea. It will also look for its configuration file CustomConf in $(CustomPath)/conf/app.ini, and will use the current working directory as the relative base path AppWorkPath for a number configurable values. Finally the static files will be served from StaticRootPath which defaults to the AppWorkPath.

These values, although useful when developing, may conflict with downstream users preferences.

One option is to use a script file to shadow the gitea binary and create an appropriate environment before running Gitea. However, when building you can change these defaults using the LDFLAGS environment variable for make. The appropriate settings are as follows

• To set the CustomPath use LDFLAGS="-X \"code.gitea.io/gitea/modules/setting.CustomPath=custom-path\""
• For CustomConf you should use -X \"code.gitea.io/gitea/modules/setting.CustomConf=conf.ini\"
• For AppWorkPath you should use -X \"code.gitea.io/gitea/modules/setting.AppWorkPath=working-path\"
• For StaticRootPath you should use -X \"code.gitea.io/gitea/modules/setting.StaticRootPath=static-root-path\"
• To change the default PID file location use -X \"code.gitea.io/gitea/cmd.PIDFile=/run/gitea.pid\"

Add as many of the strings with their preceding -X to the LDFLAGS variable and run make build with the appropriate TAGS as above.

Running gitea help will allow you to review what the computed settings will be for your gitea.

Cross Build​

The go compiler toolchain supports cross-compiling to different architecture targets that are supported by the toolchain. See GOOS and GOARCH environment variable for the list of supported targets. Cross compilation is helpful if you want to build Gitea for less-powerful systems (such as Raspberry Pi).

To cross build Gitea with build tags (TAGS), you also need a C cross compiler which targets the same architecture as selected by the GOOS and GOARCH variables. For example, to cross build for Linux ARM64 (GOOS=linux and GOARCH=arm64), you need the aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc cross compiler. This is required because Gitea build tags uses cgo's foreign-function interface (FFI).

Cross-build Gitea for Linux ARM64, without any tags:

GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm64 make build

Cross-build Gitea for Linux ARM64, with recommended build tags:

CC=aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm64 TAGS="bindata sqlite sqlite_unlock_notify" make build

Replace CC, GOOS, and GOARCH as appropriate for your architecture target.

You will sometimes need to build a static compiled image. To do this you will need to add:

LDFLAGS="-linkmode external -extldflags '-static' $LDFLAGS" TAGS="netgo osusergo $TAGS" make build

This can be combined with CC, GOOS, and GOARCH as above.

Adding bash/zsh autocompletion (from 1.19)​

A script to enable bash-completion can be found at contrib/autocompletion/bash_autocomplete. This should be altered as appropriate and can be source in your .bashrc or copied as /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/gitea.

Similarly, a script for zsh-completion can be found at contrib/autocompletion/zsh_autocomplete. This can be copied to /usr/share/zsh/_gitea or sourced within your .zshrc.

YMMV and these scripts may need further improvement.

Compile or cross-compile using Linux with Zig​

Follow Getting Started of Zig to install zig.

• Compile (Linux ➝ Linux)

CC="zig cc -target x86_64-linux-gnu" \
CGO_ENABLED=1 \
CGO_CFLAGS="-O2 -g -pthread" \
CGO_LDFLAGS="-linkmode=external -v"
GOOS=linux \
GOARCH=amd64 \
TAGS="bindata sqlite sqlite_unlock_notify" \
make build

• Cross-compile (Linux ➝ Windows)

CC="zig cc -target x86_64-windows-gnu" \
CGO_ENABLED=1 \
CGO_CFLAGS="-O2 -g -pthread" \
GOOS=windows \
GOARCH=amd64 \
TAGS="bindata sqlite sqlite_unlock_notify" \
make build

Compile or cross-compile with Zig using Windows​

Compile with GIT BASH.

• Compile (Windows ➝ Windows)

CC="zig cc -target x86_64-windows-gnu" \
CGO_ENABLED=1 \
CGO_CFLAGS="-O2 -g -pthread" \
GOOS=windows \
GOARCH=amd64 \
TAGS="bindata sqlite sqlite_unlock_notify" \
make build

• Cross-compile (Windows ➝ Linux)

CC="zig cc -target x86_64-linux-gnu" \
CGO_ENABLED=1 \
CGO_CFLAGS="-O2 -g -pthread" \
CGO_LDFLAGS="-linkmode=external -v"
GOOS=linux \
GOARCH=amd64 \
TAGS="bindata sqlite sqlite_unlock_notify" \
make build

Source Maps​

By default, gitea generates reduced source maps for frontend files to conserve space. This can be controlled with the ENABLE_SOURCEMAP environment variable:

• ENABLE_SOURCEMAP=true generates all source maps, the default for development builds
• ENABLE_SOURCEMAP=reduced generates limited source maps, the default for production builds
• ENABLE_SOURCEMAP=false generates no source maps