Building ClamAV with CMake (v0.104 and newer)

The following are instructions to build ClamAV version 0.104 and newer using CMake.

Tip: If you wish to build ClamAV version 0.103 or older from source, follow these instructions to build ClamAV using Autotools.

Building ClamAV with CMake (v0.104 and newer)

Note: Some of the dependencies are optional if you elect to not build all of the command line applications, or elect to only build the libclamav library. Specifically:

libcurl: required for libfreshclam, freshclam, clamsubmit, clamonacc

ncurses: required for clamdtop

For more information about customized builds and which dependencies can be skipped, please see the INSTALL.md document accompanying the source code.

Install prerequisites

Note: Some of the instructions below rely on Python 3's Pip package manager to install CMake. This is because some distributions do not provide a new enough version of CMake required to build ClamAV.

Tip: The Python 3 pytest package is recommended in the instructions below in case the unit tests fail so that the test output is easy to read. You're welcome to skip it. However, if you have Python 2's pytest installed but not Python 3's pytest, the tests may fail to run.

Alpine

As root or with sudo, run:

apk update && apk add \
  `# install tools` \
  g++ gcc gdb make cmake py3-pytest python3 valgrind \
  `# install clamav dependencies` \
  bzip2-dev check-dev curl-dev json-c-dev libmilter-dev libxml2-dev \
  linux-headers ncurses-dev openssl-dev pcre2-dev zlib-dev

Version 0.105+: install the Rust toolchain. The best option is to install the Rust toolchain using rustup your Rust toolchain. Alpine users on the latest release may also find an adequate Rust toolchain with:

apk add cargo rust

Redhat / Centos / Fedora

For RHEL 8 or Centos Stream, you will probably need to run this to enable EPEL & PowerTools. As root or with sudo, run:

dnf install -y epel-release
dnf install -y dnf-plugins-core
dnf install -y https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
dnf config-manager --set-enabled PowerTools | \
  dnf config-manager --set-enabled powertools | true

As root or with sudo, run:

dnf install -y \
  `# install tools` \
  gcc gcc-c++ make python3 python3-pip valgrind \
  `# install clamav dependencies` \
  bzip2-devel check-devel json-c-devel libcurl-devel libxml2-devel \
  ncurses-devel openssl-devel pcre2-devel sendmail-devel zlib-devel

Note: If you get dnf: command not found, use yum instead.

As a regular user, run:

python3 -m pip install --user cmake pytest

Tip: If you don't have a user account, e.g. in a Docker container, run:
python3 -m pip install cmake pytest

Version 0.105+: install the Rust toolchain. The best option is to install the Rust toolchain using rustup your Rust toolchain. Centos and RHEL users are unlikely to find an adequate Rust toolchain through the distribution's package manager. Fedora users that are unable or unwilling to use rustup may have luck with:

dnf install -y cargo rust

SUSE / openSUSE

As root or with sudo, run:

zypper install -y \
  `# install tools` \
  gcc gcc-c++ make python3 valgrind cmake python-pytest \
  `# install clamav dependencies` \
  libbz2-devel check-devel libjson-c-devel libcurl-devel libxml2-devel \
  ncurses-devel libopenssl-devel pcre2-devel sendmail-devel zlib-devel \

Tip: If you you're on an older release and if the cmake provided by your release is too old, then you may need to remove cmake, install python3-pip, and then install cmake like this:
python3 -m pip install --user cmake

Version 0.105+: install the Rust toolchain. The best option is to install the Rust toolchain using rustup your Rust toolchain. openSUSE users that are unable or unwilling to use rustup may have luck with:

zypper install -y cargo rust

Ubuntu / Debian

As root or with sudo, run:

apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
  `# install tools` \
  gcc make pkg-config python3 python3-pip python3-pytest valgrind cmake \
  `# install clamav dependencies` \
  check libbz2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libjson-c-dev libmilter-dev \
  libncurses5-dev libpcre2-dev libssl-dev libxml2-dev zlib1g-dev

Tip: If you you're on an older release and if the cmake provided by your release is too old, then you may need to remove cmake, install python3-pip, and then install cmake like this:
python3 -m pip install --user cmake

Version 0.105+: install the Rust toolchain. The best option is to install the Rust toolchain using rustup your Rust toolchain. Debian users are unlikely to find an adequate Rust toolchain through the distribution's package manager. Ubuntu users will have better luck. At the time of writing, even Ubuntu 18.04 appears to have relatively recent Rust tools available (1.57.0, where the latest security patch for rustc is version 1.58.1). Debian and Ubuntu users may install the Rust toolchain with:

apt-get install -y cargo rustc

Note: Debian and Ubuntu chose to call it rustc and not rust, like the others. Ubuntu users may instead install rust-all for a few additional Rust development tools that you would normally install through rustup. The rust-all package does not appear to exist for Debian 11 (bullseye).

macOS

The following instructions require you to install HomeBrew to install tools and library dependencies.

brew update

packages=(
  # install tools
  python3 cmake
  # install clamav dependencies
  bzip2 check curl-openssl json-c libxml2 ncurses openssl@1.1 pcre2 zlib
)
for item in "${packages[@]}"; do
  brew install $item || true; brew upgrade $item || brew upgrade $item
done

python3 -m pip install --user cmake pytest

Note: You may also need to install pkg-config if not already present on your system. You can use Homebrew to do this with: brew install pkg-config

Version 0.105+: install the Rust toolchain. The best option is to install the Rust toolchain using rustup your Rust toolchain.

FreeBSD

As root or with sudo, run:

pkg install -y \
  `# install tools` \
  gmake cmake pkgconf py38-pip python38 \
  `# install clamav dependencies` \
  bzip2 check curl json-c libmilter libxml2 ncurses pcre2

Now as a regular user, run:

python3.8 -m pip install --user pytest

Tip: If you don't have a user account, e.g. in a Docker container, run:
python3 -m pip install pytest

Version 0.105+: install the Rust toolchain. The best option is to install the Rust toolchain using rustup . FreeBSD users may find an adequate version using the package manager to install the Rust toolchain, depending on their release. FreeBSD users may install the Rust toolchain with:

pkg install -y rust

Install Rust toolchain

Starting with ClamAV v0.105, a Rust toolchain is required to compile portions of libclamav. You can install the appropriate toolchain for your development environment by following the instructions on the rustup website. This ensures that you have the most up-to-date compiler available at the time of installation; keep your toolchain updated for new features and bug/security fixes by periodically executing: rustup update.

Building ClamAV requires, at a minimum, Rust compiler version 1.56, as it relies on features introduced in the Rust 2021 Edition.

Depending on your target environment, compilers may be manually installed without downloading and executing the rustup script. Some platforms (e.g., Alpine Linux) provide packages that are recent-enough to build ClamAV. However, some Linux distributions such as CentOS, provide no package, or toolchains that are too old. For these platforms, if you are unable or unwilling to utilize rustup, you may download and install prebuilt toolchain binaries directly from rust-lang.org.

Adding new system user and group

If installing to the system, and if you intend to run freshclam or clamd as as service, you should create a service account before compiling and installing ClamAV.

Follow these steps to create a service account.

Download the source code

Download the source from the clamav.net downloads page.

Extract the archive:

tar xzf clamav-[ver].tar.gz
cd clamav-[ver]

Build ClamAV

First, make a "build" subdirectory. This will enable you to easily delete your build files if something goes wrong and you need to re-configure and try again.

mkdir build && cd build

Next, select the build options you desire. For a full list of configuration options, see the "Custom CMake options" section in the INSTALL.md file included with the source code.

To help you get started, here are some popular build configurations.

The Default Build

The default build type is RelWithDebInfo, that is "Release mode with Debugging symbols". It will install to /usr/local.

cmake ..
cmake --build .
ctest
sudo cmake --build . --target install

Tip: If building for macOS, you may need to override the system provided LibreSSL with the OpenSSL you installed using Homebrew. For example:

cmake .. \
  -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local/clamav                                    \
  -D OPTIMIZE=OFF                                                              \
  -D OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=/usr/local/opt/openssl@1.1/                              \
  -D OPENSSL_CRYPTO_LIBRARY=/usr/local/opt/openssl@1.1/lib/libcrypto.1.1.dylib \
  -D OPENSSL_SSL_LIBRARY=/usr/local/opt/openssl@1.1/lib/libssl.1.1.dylib
make
sudo make install

A Linux Distribution-style Build

This build type mimics the layout you may be familiar with if installing a ClamAV package on Debian, Ubuntu, Alpine, and some other distributions:

cmake .. \
    -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr \
    -D CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR=lib \
    -D APP_CONFIG_DIRECTORY=/etc/clamav \
    -D DATABASE_DIRECTORY=/var/lib/clamav \
    -D ENABLE_JSON_SHARED=OFF
cmake --build .
ctest
sudo cmake --build . --target install

Using the above example:

CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX - The install "prefix" will be /usr.
CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR - The library directory will be lib (i.e. /usr/lib).

This may be the default anyways, but you may want to specify if CMake tries to install to lib64 and if lib64 is not desired.
APP_CONFIG_DIRECTORY - The config directory will be /etc/clamav.

Note: This absolute path is non-portable.
DATABASE_DIRECTORY - The database directory will be /var/lib/clamav.

Note: This absolute path is non-portable.

Tip: Setting ENABLE_JSON_SHARED=OFF is preferred, but it will require json-c version 0.15 or newer unless you build json-c yourself with custom options. If json-c 0.15+ is not available to you, you may omit the option and just use the json-c shared library. But be warned that downstream applications which use libclamav.so may crash if they also use a different JSON library.

Some other popular configuration options include:

CMAKE_INSTALL_DOCDIR - Specify exact documentation subdirectory, relative to the install prefix. The default may vary depending on your system and how you install CMake.

E.g., -D CMAKE_INSTALL_DOCDIR=share/doc/packages/clamav
CMAKE_SKIP_RPATH - If enabled, no RPATH is built into anything. This may be required when building packages for some Linux distributions. See the CMake wiki for more detail about CMake's RPATH handling.

E.g., -D CMAKE_SKIP_RPATH=ON

Please see the CMake documentation for more instructions on how to customize the install paths.

A Build for Development

This suggested development configuration generates a Ninja-based build system instead of the default Makefile-based build system. Ninja is faster than Make, but you will have to install "ninja" (or "ninja-build"). With the following commands, ClamAV will be compiled in Debug mode with optimizations disabled. It will install to an "install" subdirectory and SystemD integration is disabled so that sudo is not required for the install and SystemD unit files are not installed to the system. This build also enables building a static libclamav.a library as well as building the example applications.

cmake .. -G Ninja \
    -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug \
    -D OPTIMIZE=OFF \
    -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=`pwd`/install \
    -D ENABLE_EXAMPLES=ON \
    -D ENABLE_STATIC_LIB=ON \
    -D ENABLE_SYSTEMD=OFF
cmake --build .
ctest --verbose
cmake --build . --target install

You can find additional instructions in our Development chapter.

About the tests

ClamAV's public test suite is run using ctest. On Linux systems, our build system will detect if you have Valgrind. If installed, each test will run a second time using Valgrind to check for leaks.

If a test fails, please report the issue on GitHub. You will find .log files for each of the tests in the build/unit_tests directory. The output from ctest --verbose may give us enough information, but if not it could be helpful to zip up the .log files and attach them to the ticket.

Un-install

CMake doesn't provide a simple command to uninstall. However, CMake does build an install_manifest.txt file when you do the install. You can use the manifest to remove the installed files.

You will find the manifest in the directory where you compiled ClamAV. If you followed the recommendations (above), then you will find it at <clamav source directory>/build/install_manifest.txt.

Feel free to inspect the file so you're comfortable knowing what you're about to delete.

Open a terminal and cd to that <clamav source directory>/build directory. Then run:

xargs rm < install_manifest.txt

This will leave behind the directories, and will leave behind any files added after install including the signature databases and any config files. You will have to delete these extra files yourself.

Tip: You may need to use sudo, depending on where you installed to.

What now?

Now that ClamAV is installed, you will want to customize your configuration and perhaps set up some scanning automation and alerting mechanisms.

Continue on to "Configuration"...

ClamAV Documentation