---
title: Advanced build process
parent: Development
order: 10
---

If you just want to install Rolens, please refer to the [installation document](/installation/). You can read this guide to get a detailed overview of the build procedure.

## Prerequisites

Rolens is written in Go, so you should download the Go compiler from [the download page](https://go.dev/dl/). The minimum version required is 1.18. You can confirm whether it's installed correctly by running `go version` and checking that it outputs something similar to `go1.18.2`.

Furthermore, you need to have [Wails ^3.1](https://wails.io/docs/gettingstarted/installation) installed: `go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2/cmd/wails@latest`. Wails may have platform-specific dependencies; you can consult [`wails doctor`](https://wails.io/docs/reference/cli#doctor) to find out what dependencies Wails needs and how to install them.

In order to compile the frontend, [Node.js](https://nodejs.org/en/download) ^16.0 and the [npm](https://npmjs.com) package manager ^8.0 (included in Node.js) are required. To confirm the installed versions of those tools, execute `node -v` and `npm -v`.

## Download source

To obtain a copy of the source code, do either of the following:

* Download a tarball or zip archive from the [release page](https://github.com/garraflavatra/rolens/releases/latest). Make sure you download the source archive, and not a pre-compiled binary.
* Or clone [the Git repository](https://github.com/garraflavatra/rolens): `git clone https://github.com/garraflavatra/rolens.git`.

## Compile

`cd` into the root directory of the source code and run either:

* `wails build` to generate an executable for your platform.
* `wails build -nsis` to generate an [NSIS installer](https://nsis.sourceforge.io/Main_Page) for Windows. This requires that you have NSIS installed on your machine.

The generated binary will live in `build/bin`. You may want to run the installer (Windows) or move the app to the Applications folder (Mac).

If Wails complains that there are too many open files, you can try to increase the maximum number of open files using [`ulimit -f 1024`](https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/ulimit.1p.html) (or whichever value) on *nix systems.
