Since you are reading this from the Singularity source code, it will be assumed that you are building/compiling from source.

Singularity packages are available for various Linux distributions, but may not always be up-to-date with the latest source release version.

For full instructions on installation, including building RPMs, installing pre-built EPEL packages etc. please check the installation section of the admin guide.

You must first install development tools and libraries to your host.

On Debian-based systems, including Ubuntu:

# Ensure repositories are up-to-date
sudo apt-get update
# Install debian packages for dependencies
sudo apt-get install -y \
    build-essential \
    libseccomp-dev \
    pkg-config \
    squashfs-tools \
    cryptsetup \
    curl wget git

On CentOS/RHEL:

# Install basic tools for compiling
sudo yum groupinstall -y 'Development Tools'
# Ensure EPEL repository is available
sudo yum install -y epel-release
# Install RPM packages for dependencies
sudo yum install -y \
    libseccomp-devel \
    squashfs-tools \
    cryptsetup \
    wget git

Singularity is written in Go, and may require a newer version of Go than is available in the repositories of your distribution. We recommend installing the latest version of Go from the official binaries.

First, download the Go tar.gz archive to /tmp, then extract the archive to /usr/local.

NOTE: if you are updating Go from a older version, make sure you remove /usr/local/go before reinstalling it.

export GOVERSION=1.17.3 OS=linux ARCH=amd64  # change this as you need

wget -O /tmp/go${GOVERSION}.${OS}-${ARCH}.tar.gz \
  https://dl.google.com/go/go${GOVERSION}.${OS}-${ARCH}.tar.gz
sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf /tmp/go${GOVERSION}.${OS}-${ARCH}.tar.gz

Finally, add /usr/local/go/bin to the PATH environment variable:

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

If you will be making changes to the source code, and submitting PRs, you should install golangci-lint, which is the linting tool used in the Singularity project to ensure code consistency.

Every pull request must pass the golangci-lint checks, and these will be run automatically before attempting to merge the code. If you are modifying Singularity and contributing your changes to the repository, it's faster to run these checks locally before uploading your pull request.

In order to download and install the latest version of golangci-lint, you can run:

curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/golangci/golangci-lint/master/install.sh | sh -s -- -b $(go env GOPATH)/bin v1.43.0

Add $(go env GOPATH) to the PATH environment variable:

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$(go env GOPATH)/bin' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

With the adoption of Go modules you no longer need to clone the Singularity repository to a specific location.

Clone the repository with git in a location of your choice:

git clone https://github.com/hpcng/singularity.git
cd singularity

By default your clone will be on the master branch which is where development of Singularity happens. To build a specific version of Singularity, check out a release tag before compiling, for example:

git checkout v3.8.4

You can configure, build, and install Singularity using the following commands:

./mconfig
cd ./builddir
make
sudo make install

And that's it! Now you can check your Singularity version by running:

singularity --version

The mconfig command accepts options that can modify the build and installation of Singularity. For example, to build in a different folder and to set the install prefix to a different path:

./mconfig -b ./buildtree -p /usr/local

See the output of ./mconfig -h for available options.

On a RHEL / CentOS / Fedora machine you can build a Singularity into an rpm package, and install it from the rpm. This is useful if you need to install Singularity across multiple machines, or wish to manage all software via yum/dnf.

To build the rpm, in addition to the dependencies, install rpm-build, wget, and golang:

sudo yum install -y rpm-build wget golang

The rpm build can use the distribution or EPEL version of Go, even though as of this writing that version is older than the default minimum version of Go that Singularity requires. This is because the rpm applies a source code patch to lower the minimum required.

To build from a release source tarball do these commands:

export VERSION=3.8.4  # this is the singularity version, change as you need

# Fetch the source
wget https://github.com/hpcng/singularity/releases/download/v${VERSION}/singularity-${VERSION}.tar.gz
# Build the rpm from the source tar.gz
rpmbuild -tb singularity-${VERSION}.tar.gz
# Install Singularity using the resulting rpm
sudo rpm -ivh ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/singularity-${VERSION}-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
# (Optionally) Remove the build tree and source to save space
rm -rf ~/rpmbuild singularity-${VERSION}*.tar.gz

Alternatively, to build an RPM from the latest master you can clone the repo as detailed above. Create the build configuration using the --only-rpm option of mconfig if you're using the system's too-old golang installation, to lower the minimum required version. Then use the rpm make target to build Singularity as an rpm package:

./mconfig --only-rpm
make -C builddir rpm
sudo rpm -ivh ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/singularity-3.8.4*.x86_64.rpm # or whatever version you built

By default, the rpm will be built so that Singularity is installed under /usr/local.

To build an rpm with an alternative install prefix set RPMPREFIX on the make step, for example:

make -C builddir rpm RPMPREFIX=/opt/singularity

For more information on installing/updating/uninstalling the RPM, check out our admin docs.

Additional information on how to build a Debian package can be found in dist/debian/DEBIAN_PACKAGE.md.