Building¶

This guide covers building Skewer from source. See Installation for dependency setup.

Don't want to build Skewer?

Pre-built binaries are available for every release. See the Pre-built Binaries guide.

Using CMake Presets¶

The project uses CMake presets for consistent builds. All build commands use --parallel 4 to avoid maxing out your CPU — adjust up if you have a dedicated build machine.

# List available presets
cmake --list-presets

# Configure a preset
cmake --preset relwithdebinfo

# Build with a preset
cmake --build --preset relwithdebinfo --parallel 4

Available Presets¶

Preset	Description
`relwithdebinfo`	Default - Release build with debug symbols (recommended)
`debug`	Debug build with symbols, no optimizations
`release`	Optimized release build (-O3)
`release-portable`	Optimized release build for portable binary bundles
`ci`	CI build with tests enabled

See the full preset list in the CLI Reference for all available presets, including asan and release-milan.

Build Outputs¶

After building, binaries are located in build/<preset>/:

build/relwithdebinfo/
├── skewer/
│   ├── skewer-render    # Main rendering CLI
│   └── skewer-worker    # Worker for distributed renders
├── loom/
│   ├── loom            # Deep compositor
│   └── loom-worker     # Worker for deep compositing
├── libs/exrio/         # EXR library
└── api/                # Compiled protobuf C++ files

Running Tests¶

# Build and run tests
cmake --preset ci
cmake --build --preset ci --parallel 4
ctest --preset ci --parallel 4

Building the Go CLI¶

The Go CLI and Coordinator are built separately from the C++ codebase:

# Ensure Go dependencies are installed
cd orchestration
go mod download

# Build CLI
go build -o skewer-cli ./cmd/cli/

# Build Coordinator
go build -o coordinator ./cmd/coordinator/

The built binaries will be in orchestration/.

Troubleshooting¶

CMake can't find dependencies¶

If CMake can't find dependencies, you may need to specify paths:

cmake --preset relwithdebinfo -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/path/to/libs

Build errors on macOS¶

If you encounter Apple Silicon build issues, ensure you're using the correct architecture:

cmake --preset relwithdebinfo -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURE=arm64