Building

fastfetch uses CMake for building. pkg-config is recommended for better library detection. The simplest steps to build the fastfetch and flashfetch binaries are:

mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build . --target fastfetch

cmake --build . without --target builds everything, including flashfetch (see BUILD_FLASHFETCH below).

If the build process fails to find the headers for a library listed in dependencies, fastfetch will simply build without support for that specific feature. This means it won't look for it at runtime and will act like it isn't available. Run fastfetch --list-features after building to see what was actually compiled in.

Build options

Pass options to CMake with -D<NAME>=<VALUE>, for example:

cmake -DENABLE_LUA=OFF -DBINARY_LINK_TYPE=static ..

General

Option	Default	Description
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE	RelWithDebInfo	Standard CMake build type. Note that a Debug build enables internal assertions.
BINARY_LINK_TYPE	dlopen	How shared libraries are linked: dlopen, dynamic or static. With dlopen (the default) libraries are resolved at runtime, so the binary still starts when one of them is missing.
BUILD_FLASHFETCH	ON	Also build the flashfetch benchmark binary.
BUILD_TESTS	OFF	Also build the test executables, which are run with ctest.
SET_TWEAK	ON	Append the git tweak to the project version. Disabled by CI for release builds.
IS_MUSL	OFF	Set when building against musl libc. Used by CI.
INSTALL_LICENSE	ON	Install the license into /usr/share/licenses.
ENABLE_LTO	ON	Use link-time optimization in release mode, if supported.
ENABLE_ASAN	OFF	Build with AddressSanitizer.
ENABLE_TRACER	OFF	Build with function tracing.
ENABLE_SYSTEM_YYJSON	OFF	Use a system-provided yyjson instead of the embedded copy.

Feature toggles

Most optional libraries listed in dependencies have a matching ENABLE_<NAME> toggle — for example ENABLE_VULKAN, ENABLE_OPENCL, ENABLE_DBUS, ENABLE_SQLITE3, ENABLE_RPM, ENABLE_DRM, ENABLE_PULSE. They are ON by default and are automatically forced to OFF on platforms where they don't apply.

The following ones are worth calling out:

Option	Default	Description
ENABLE_IMAGE_LOGO	ON	Image logos (sixel / kitty / iTerm / chafa). Disabling it removes the whole image-logo subsystem.
ENABLE_IMAGEMAGICK7	ON	ImageMagick 7 decoder (Linux, BSD, SunOS, Haiku, GNU).
ENABLE_IMAGEMAGICK6	ON	ImageMagick 6 decoder. Deprecated — prefer ImageMagick 7.
ENABLE_SIXEL	ON	Embedded libsixel encoder (Windows, macOS, Android). Replaces ImageMagick's SIXEL coder on those platforms.
ENABLE_CHAFA	ON	The chafa image protocol.
ENABLE_LUA	ON	Lua scripting in format strings.
ENABLE_QUICKJS	ON	QuickJS scripting in format strings.
ENABLE_LIBZFS	ON	libzfs.
ENABLE_WORDEXP	ON	Use wordexp(3) instead of glob(3) for config paths, if available.
ENABLE_WCWIDTH	ON	Measure wide-width characters with the embedded wcwidth implementation. Disabling it gives a smaller and slightly faster build, but logos containing CJK or emoji characters may be measured too narrow and render incorrectly. Such use cases are uncommon.
ENABLE_EMBEDDED_PCIIDS	OFF	Embed pci.ids into the binary. Requires python.
ENABLE_EMBEDDED_AMDGPUIDS	OFF	Embed amdgpu.ids into the binary. Requires python.

Platform-specific options:

Option	Platform	Default	Description
ENABLE_WIN81_COMPAT	Windows	ON	Target Windows 8.1 and later. Windows 7 is not supported.
ENABLE_APPLE_MEMSIZE_USABLE	macOS	OFF	Report the usable memory size as the total memory size in the Memory module, to match other systems.
CUSTOM_PCI_IDS_PATH	Linux	empty	Path to pci.ids, defaults to /usr/share/hwdata/pci.ids.
CUSTOM_AMDGPU_IDS_PATH	Linux	empty	Path to amdgpu.ids, defaults to /usr/share/libdrm/amdgpu.ids.
CUSTOM_OS_RELEASE_PATH	Linux	empty	Path to os-release, defaults to /etc/os-release.

Modules and package managers

Option	Default	Description
MODULE_DISABLE_<NAME>	OFF	Exclude a module from the build. <NAME> is the module directory name in upper case, with no separator added — for example MODULE_DISABLE_CPU or MODULE_DISABLE_BLUETOOTHRADIO. There is one such option per module.
PACKAGES_DISABLE_<NAME>	OFF	Skip a package manager by default. <NAME> is the manager name in upper case, for example PACKAGES_DISABLE_NIX. There is one such option per supported manager.
PACKAGES_REMOVE_DISABLED	OFF	Remove disabled package managers from the build entirely, instead of only skipping them at runtime.

Building on Windows

Currently GCC or clang is required (MSVC is not supported). MSYS2 with the CLANG64 subsystem (or CLANGARM64 if needed) is suggested (and tested) to build fastfetch.

1. Install MSYS2
2. Open MSYS2 / CLANG64 (not MSYS2 / MSYS, which targets the cygwin C runtime)
3. Install dependencies

pacman -Syu mingw-w64-clang-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-clang-x86_64-pkgconf mingw-w64-clang-x86_64-clang mingw-w64-clang-x86_64-vulkan-loader mingw-w64-clang-x86_64-vulkan-headers mingw-w64-clang-x86_64-opencl-icd mingw-w64-clang-x86_64-cppwinrt

Optional libraries (for example mingw-w64-clang-x86_64-directx-headers, which improves GPU type detection) are listed in dependencies and are not required for a working build.

Follow the building instructions for Linux next.