Linux Development

The device software can also run on a native Linux machine thanks to the Portduino framework.

The application either simulates some of the interfaces, or uses the real hardware of your machine. Device firmware from 1.3.42 and on even allows you to simulate the LoRa chip by sending and receiving Meshtastic packets via a local TCP port. In this way, you can let multiple instances of the application communicate with each other as if they did via LoRa. For instructions on how to use it, see the interactive simulator that also emulates a wireless environment using simulated positions of the nodes.

The following libraries must be installed before building meshtasticd:

Debian

# Base dependencies
sudo apt install libgpiod-dev libyaml-cpp-dev libbluetooth-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libi2c-dev
# Optional dependencies for web server support
sudo apt install openssl libssl-dev libulfius-dev liborcania-dev

Fedora

# Enable the Meshtastic build tools COPR repository
sudo dnf copr enable @meshtastic/build-tools
# Base dependencies
sudo dnf install gcc-c++ pkgconfig(yaml-cpp) pkgconfig(libgpiod) pkgconfig(bluez) pkgconfig(libusb-1.0) libi2c-devel
# Optional dependencies for web server support
sudo dnf install pkgconfig(openssl) pkgconfig(liborcania) pkgconfig(libyder) pkgconfig(libulfius)

Building

The easiest way of building the native application is using Visual Studio Code with the PlatformIO extension. See the instructions for creating such a building environment here.

Then after opening the firmware repository in Visual Studio Code, simply click on the PlatformIO extension in the left bar, select native and click on 'Build'. This will generate the binary file 'program' which you can find in .pio/build/native/. Once in this directory or when you copied the file to your current directory, launch the application with ./program.