Build Instructions For FreeBSD

Custom FreeBSD builds

OBS Studio's CMake options allow customization of the desired build configuration but also require manual setup and preparation. Available CMake configuration variables can be found in the CMake build system documentation. The recommended action is to create a CMake Preset for each build configuration.

NOTE: FreeBSD is not officially supported by the OBS team and is provided as-is.

Prerequisites

• FreeBSD 13 or newer
• CMake 3.28 or newer
• Git
• Ninja
• Optional: Ccache to improve compilation speeds on consecutive builds
• Several additional dependencies (see step 2 below)

Build Procedure

1. Get the source code

1. Open a Terminal window, create and switch to a directory you want to have OBS checked out
2. Clone the repository including submodules: git clone --recursive https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio.git

(If you do not know what submodules are, or you are not using Git from the command line, PLEASE make sure to fetch the submodules too.)

2. Get the dependencies

• Alternatively the required dependencies can be installed using pkg:

  • Build system dependencies

  sudo pkg install cmake ninja binutils pkgconf curl ccache
  

  • OBS dependencies (core):

  sudo pkg install ffmpeg libx264 mbedtls mesa-libs jansson lua52 luajit python37 libX11 xorgproto libxcb libXcomposite libXext libXfixes libXinerama libXrandr swig dbus jansson libICE libSM libsysinfo
  

  • OBS dependencies (UI):

  sudo pkg install qt6-base qt6-imageformats qt6-svg
  

  • Plugin dependencies:

  sudo pkg install v4l_compat fdk-aac fontconfig freetype2 speexdsp libudev-devd libv4l vlc audio/jack pulseaudio sndio
  

3. Set up the build project

1. Run CMake to generate a build environment

cmake -S . -B <YOUR_BUILD_DIRECTORY> -G Ninja \
    -DENABLE_RELOCATABLE=ON \
    -DENABLE_PORTABLE_CONFIG=ON \
    -DENABLE_PIPEWIRE=OFF

Optional Settings:

2. To change the build type, pass either Debug, Release, RelWithDebInfo, or MinSizeRel as -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE

NOTE: When building OBS with ENABLE_RELOCATABLE disabled, OBS expects GNU-based install paths (e.g. /usr/local/[bin,lib,share]) and is built for a single architecture only. To create separate builds for 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, always enable portable builds.

4. Build the project

1. Run cmake --build <YOUR_BUILD_DIRECTORY> to build the entire OBS project
2. Run cmake --build <YOUR_BUILD_DIRECTORY> -t libobs to build only libobs or any other valid target
3. Run cmake --build <YOUR_BUILD_DIRECTORY> -t clean to clean your current build directory

6. Install the project

Installation will use the directory specified via -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX or can be customised with the --prefix switch:

1. Run cmake --install <YOUR_BUILD_DIRECTORY> to install OBS to the prefix the project was configured with
2. Run cmake --install <YOUR_BUILD_DIRECTORY> --prefix <YOUR_INSTALL_LOCATION> to install OBS to a custom location

7. Create installer package

1. Run cmake --package <YOUR_BUILD_DIRECTORY> - CMake will handle all operations necessary to create a installer package (compressed archive as well as shell script with embedded binary)