Theos

A cross-platform build system for creating iOS, macOS, Linux, and Windows programs.

Installation instructions for Linux & Windows

This guide will help you install Theos on your Linux machine, Windows machine via Windows Subsystem for Linux, or a Google Cloud Shell instance.

Platform Minimum OS version Targets supported
Linux
Windows 10		 Linux kernel 3.16
Windows 10 build 14393		 Linux, iOS

All the commands shown in the following instructions are meant to be run as a normal user, not root. Similarly, Theos is also meant to be run as a normal user, not root.

  1. If you are running on Windows and haven’t already installed a Linux distribution, follow Microsoft’s instructions to do so.

  2. Install the following prerequisites:

     sudo apt install build-essential fakeroot libtinfo5 libz3-dev rsync curl perl unzip git

    If you don’t use a distribution that uses the APT package manager such as Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or Pop!_OS, you will need to determine the equivalent packages to install from your distribution’s package manager.

  3. If you are running on Windows using WSL 1 (how do I know?), apply the following fix so fakeroot works:

     sudo update-alternatives --set fakeroot /usr/bin/fakeroot-tcp

  4. Set up the THEOS environment variable:

     echo "export THEOS=~/theos" >> ~/.profile

    For this change to take effect, you must restart your shell. Open a new tab and do echo $THEOS on your shell to check if this is working.

  5. Clone Theos to your device:

     git clone --recursive https://github.com/theos/theos.git $THEOS

  6. Get a toolchain:

    Without Swift support (smaller toolchain size):

     curl -LO https://github.com/sbingner/llvm-project/releases/latest/download/linux-ios-arm64e-clang-toolchain.tar.lzma
 TMP=$(mktemp -d)
 tar -xvf linux-ios-arm64e-clang-toolchain.tar.lzma -C $TMP
 mkdir -p $THEOS/toolchain/linux/iphone
 mv $TMP/ios-arm64e-clang-toolchain/* $THEOS/toolchain/linux/iphone/
 rm -r linux-ios-arm64e-clang-toolchain.tar.lzma $TMP

    With Swift support (larger toolchain size):

     sudo apt install zstd
 curl -LO https://github.com/CRKatri/llvm-project/releases/download/swift-5.3.2-RELEASE/swift-5.3.2-RELEASE-ubuntu20.04.tar.zst
 TMP=$(mktemp -d)
 tar -xvf swift-5.3.2-RELEASE-ubuntu20.04.tar.zst -C $TMP
 mkdir -p $THEOS/toolchain/linux/iphone $THEOS/toolchain/swift
 mv $TMP/swift-5.3.2-RELEASE-ubuntu20.04/* $THEOS/toolchain/linux/iphone/
 ln -s $THEOS/toolchain/linux/iphone $THEOS/toolchain/swift
 rm -r swift-5.3.2-RELEASE-ubuntu20.04.tar.zst $TMP

    Note that compiling Swift code requires a fairly modern SDK. It is recommended that you use the latest SDK that you can get.

  7. Get an iOS SDK:

    You can get patched SDKs from our SDKs repo.

     curl -LO https://github.com/theos/sdks/archive/master.zip
 TMP=$(mktemp -d)
 unzip master.zip -d $TMP
 mv $TMP/sdks-master/*.sdk $THEOS/sdks
 rm -r master.zip $TMP