Building from Source

Building nvme-cli

nvme-cli uses meson as its build system. This page covers the common build and the dependency packages of some distributions. The full reference is Documentation/BUILDING.md in the source tree. It covers the install paths, debug and sanitizer builds, the selection of plugins, the Windows build and distribution packaging.

Quick start

$ meson setup .build
$ meson compile -C .build
# meson install -C .build

Since nvme-cli 3.x, libnvme is part of the nvme-cli source tree. You do not need to build or install it separately first, unlike in nvme-cli 2.x.

Since nvme-cli 3.2, nvme-cli also builds and runs on FreeBSD. PCIe devices work through the nvme(4) driver. NVMe-oF, NVMe-MI, nvme-discoverd and nvme top are not available there yet.

By default this installs under /usr/local. To install into the paths a Linux distribution normally uses instead:

$ meson setup .build --prefix /usr --sysconfdir /etc

Dependencies

A minimal build needs a C compiler (gcc or clang), ninja, and meson. A few optional libraries unlock extra features. Each is auto-detected by default; pass -D<option>=enabled or -D<option>=disabled to force it:

Library	Feature it unlocks
json-c	config.json parsing, all vendor plugins, JSON output. Without it, plugins are disabled.
openssl	TLS over NVMe-TCP, host authentication
keyutils	Key management for NVMe-oF authentication
libdbus	NVMe-MI endpoint discovery (disabled by default)
liburing	Get-log-page via io_uring (disabled by default)
python	Python bindings for libnvme
libarchive	Log archives of the WDC, SanDisk, Micron, Samsung and Solidigm plugins (since 3.2). Without it, these subcommands fail with an error.

For the full option list, including meson's own built-in options, run:

$ meson configure .build

Building specific plugins

By default every vendor plugin is built. To build only some of them:

$ meson setup .build -Dplugins=intel,wdc,ocp

Minimal static build with muon

Older distributions may ship a meson version too old for nvme-cli. muon is an implementation of the meson build system in C99, with far fewer dependencies than meson itself. scripts/build.sh drives it for you:

$ scripts/build.sh -m muon

This needs only:

• make
• gcc
• git

and produces a static binary. It downloads and builds muon and samurai (its ninja replacement) as part of the build.

For some older distributions, additional packages need to be installed first; see the sections below.

Pre-built static binaries

You do not have to build nvme-cli yourself to test it. Static x86_64 binaries are available on the releases page:

• nightly: a pre-release with a static Linux build of the latest master commit. It is updated on every push to master. Direct link: nvme-cli-latest-x86_64.
• Since v3.2: each release has a static Linux binary and a Windows binary attached.

Per-distribution setup

Fedora

# dnf install json-c-devel openssl-devel keyutils-libs-devel dbus-devel python3-devel

CentOS Stream 9

$ dnf config-manager --set-enabled powertools
$ dnf search glibc
$ dnf provides */libc.a
$ dnf install glibc-static

Ubuntu 24.04

Dependencies if using meson directly:

$ sudo apt install gcc make git
$ sudo pip3 install meson
$ sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip python3-setuptools python3-wheel ninja-build
$ sudo apt install cmake swig libjson-c-dev libssl-dev libkeyutils-dev pkg-config

SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 Service Pack 7

# zypper install git meson gcc libjson-c-devel keyutils-devel openssl-devel

EOL distributions

These are unsupported for the muon minimal build, but are included here for reference:

CentOS 8

$ dnf config-manager --set-enabled powertools
$ dnf search glibc
$ dnf provides */libc.a
$ dnf install glibc-static

CentOS 7

$ yum install glibc-static