encfs/INSTALL.md

This document provides generic information for compiling EncFS.

If you are looking for specific instructions for your operating system or distribution, take a look at the wiki.

Compiling EncFS

EncFS uses the CMake toolchain to create makefiles.

Quickest way to build and test EncFS :

./build.sh

Or following are the detailed steps to build EncFS:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Optional, but strongly recommended, is running the unit and integration tests to verify that the generated binaries work as expected. Unit tests will run almost instantly:

make unittests
make test

Integration tests will take ~20 seconds to run and will mount an encrypted filesystem and run tests on it:
running integration tests from root (or with sudo) will run additional ones

make integration

The compilation process creates two executables, encfs and encfsctl in the encfs directory. You can install to in a system directory via:

make install

If the default path (/usr/local) is not where you want things installed, then set the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX option when running cmake. Eg:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/local

Encfs and encfsctl can also be installed by hand. They need no special permissions. You may also want the man pages encfs.1 and encfsctl.1.

Dependencies

EncFS depends on a number of libraries:

* fuse                   : the userspace filesystem layer
* openssl / libressl     : used for cryptographic primitives
* tinyxml2 (embeded)     : for reading and writing XML configuration files
* gettext                : internationalization support
* libintl                : internationalization support
* cmake                  : version 3.0.2 (Debian jessie version) or newer
* GNU make / ninja-build : to run the build for cmake