anki/docs/linux.md

# Linux

## Requirements

These instructions are written for Debian/Ubuntu; adjust for your distribution.

**Ensure some basic tools are installed**:

```
$ sudo apt install bash grep findutils curl gcc g++ git
```

The 'find' utility is 'findutils' on Debian.

**Install Python 3.8**:

If you're on a modern distribution, you may be able to install Python from the repo:

```
$  sudo apt install python3.8
```

If Python 3.8 is not available in your distro, you can download it from python.org,
compile it, and install in in /usr/local.

If your system only has Python 3.9, you should be able to build Anki with it,
but the pylint tests will currently fail, as pylint does not yet support Python 3.9.

Anki's build system will not place packages in system locations, so you do not
need to build with an active Python virtual environmental.

**Install Bazelisk**:

Download it under the name 'bazel':

```
$ curl -L https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazelisk/releases/download/v1.7.4/bazelisk-linux-amd64 -o ./bazel
```

And put it on your path:

```
$ chmod +x bazel && sudo mv bazel /usr/local/bin/
```

## Running Anki during development

From the top level of Anki's source folder:

```
./run
```

This will build Anki and run it in place.

The first build will take while, as it downloads and builds a bunch of
dependencies. When the build is complete, Anki will automatically start.

To play audio, install mpv. At the time of writing, recording is
not yet supported, as currently pyaudio is not being installed.

## Optimized builds

The `./run` command will create a non-optimized build by default. This is faster
to compile, but will mean Anki will run considerably slower.

To run Anki in optimized mode, use:

```
./scripts/runopt
```

## More

For info on running tests, building wheels and so on, please see [Development](./development.md).