Source installation (macOS, Ubuntu)¶

Getting Drake¶

We recommend that you setup SSH access to Github.com to avoid needing to type your password each time you access it. The following instructions assume you have uploaded your public SSH key to your Github account.

Now run:

git clone git@github.com:RobotLocomotion/drake.git

Note: we suggest you keep the default clone directory name (drake) and not rename it (such as drake2). The CLion integration will suffer if the checkout directory is not named drake. (See CLion IDE setup for details.)

Note: the build process may encounter problems if you have unusual characters like parentheses in the absolute path to the drake directory (see #394).

The above git clone command will configure Drake’s primary repository as a remote called origin. We recommend that you configure your fork of Drake’s primary repository as the origin remote and Drake’s primary repository as the upstream remote. This can be done by executing the following commands:

cd drake
git remote set-url origin git@github.com:[your github user name]/drake.git
git remote add upstream git@github.com:RobotLocomotion/drake.git
git remote set-url --push upstream no_push

Mandatory platform specific instructions¶

Before running the build, you must follow some one-time platform-specific setup steps:

macOS
Ubuntu

See supported configurations for the configurations and platforms that Drake officially supports. All else being equal, we would recommend developers use Ubuntu Xenial.

Build with Bazel¶

For instructions, jump to Using Bazel, or check out the full details at:

Bazel build system

Historical Note¶

Prior to 2016, Drake was built around a substantial base of MATLAB software. To view the original MATLAB implementation, you may use the tag last_sha_with_original_matlab. Note, however, that the dependencies on this branch are out of date and we do not expect that you will be able to easily compile/run the code, and do not provide support for this.