Build instructions

This page describes how to build VirtualBox OSE, once you have gotten its source code from our Subversion server, as described on the Downloads page).

The sources are the same, no matter whether you build on Linux or Windows. But the build instructions differ.

To build, use the kmk command after you have entered our development environment. This is the make command of kBuild, our homegrown build system. (To avoid confusion with an already installed make program, our make has been renamed to kmk). With kBuild, the BUILD_TYPE environment variable determines what type is built and can be release (enable compiler optimizations, strip debug and profiling code), debug (for debugging) or profile (for profiling). The default is release.

The default build target is all, which produces all executables in the out/{platform}.{architecture}/{release|profile|debug}/ directories.

• Linux host

• Mac OS X host

• Solaris host

• Windows host

Host platforms with incomplete support:

• OS/2 host

• FreeBSD host