DocumentationBuild Dynamo from source when you want to contribute code, test features on the development branch, or customize the build. If you just want to run Dynamo, the Local Installation guide is faster.
This guide covers Ubuntu and macOS. For a containerized dev environment that handles all of this automatically, see DevContainer.
Ubuntu:
macOS:
Install uv if you don’t have it:
Create and activate a virtual environment:
Maturin is the Rust-Python bindings build tool.
You should see the frontend command help output.
VSCode and Cursor users can skip manual setup using pre-configured development containers. The DevContainer installs all toolchains, builds the project, and sets up the Python environment automatically.
Framework-specific containers are available for vLLM, SGLang, and TensorRT-LLM. See the DevContainer README for setup instructions.
Before submitting PRs, install the pre-commit hooks to ensure your code passes CI checks:
Run checks manually on all files:
Missing system packages
If maturin develop fails with linker errors, verify all system dependencies are installed. On Ubuntu:
Virtual environment not activated
Maturin builds against the active Python interpreter. If you see errors about Python or site-packages, ensure your virtual environment is activated:
Disk space
The Rust target/ directory can grow to 10+ GB during development. If builds fail with disk space errors, clean the build cache:
