Ubuntu LTS 12.04 64-bit is the recommended platform.

• OS with 64-bit or 32-bit architecture
• C++11 toolchain
• Git
• Node.js 6.x or later (we recommend installing it via nvm)
• npm 3.10.x or later (run npm install -g npm)
• Ensure node-gyp uses python2 (run npm config set python /usr/bin/python2 -g, use sudo if you didn't install node via nvm)
• Development headers for libsecret.

For more details, scroll down to find how to setup a specific Linux distro.

git clone https://github.com/atom/atom.git
cd atom
script/build

To also install the newly built application, use --create-debian-package or --create-rpm-package and then install the generated package via the system package manager.

• --compress-artifacts: zips the generated application as out/atom-{arch}.tar.gz.
• --create-debian-package: creates a .deb package as out/atom-{arch}.deb
• --create-rpm-package: creates a .rpm package as out/atom-{arch}.rpm
• --install[=dir]: installs the application in ${dir}; ${dir} defaults to /usr/local.

• Install GNOME headers and other basic prerequisites:

  sudo apt-get install build-essential git libsecret-1-dev fakeroot rpm libx11-dev libxkbfile-dev

• If script/build exits with an error, you may need to install a newer C++ compiler with C++11:

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install gcc-5 g++-5
  sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-5 80 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-5
  sudo update-alternatives --config gcc # choose gcc-5 from the list

• sudo dnf --assumeyes install make gcc gcc-c++ glibc-devel git-core libsecret-devel rpmdevtools libX11-devel libxkbfile-devel

• sudo yum install -y make gcc gcc-c++ glibc-devel git-core libsecret-devel rpmdevtools

• sudo pacman -S --needed gconf base-devel git nodejs npm libsecret python2 libx11 libxkbfile
• export PYTHON=/usr/bin/python2 before building Atom.

• sbopkg -k -i node -i atom

• sudo zypper install nodejs nodejs-devel make gcc gcc-c++ glibc-devel git-core libsecret-devel rpmdevtools libX11-devel libxkbfile-devel

If you get following error with a big traceback right after Atom starts:

TypeError: Unable to watch path

you have to increase number of watched files by inotify. For testing if this is the reason for this error you can issue

sudo sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches=32768

and restart Atom. If Atom now works fine, you can make this setting permanent:

echo 32768 | sudo tee -a /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches

See also #2082.

If you get this notice when attempting to run any script, you either do not have Node.js installed, or node isn't identified as Node.js on your machine. If it's the latter, this might be caused by installing Node.js via the distro package manager and not nvm, so entering sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node into your terminal may fix the issue. On some variants (mostly Debian based distros) you can use update-alternatives too:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/node node /usr/bin/nodejs 1 --slave /usr/bin/js js /usr/bin/nodejs

If you get following error with a big traceback while building Atom:

sys.exit(gyp.script_main()) AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'script_main' gyp ERR!

you need to uninstall the system version of gyp.

On Fedora you would do the following:

sudo yum remove gyp

• Use this search to get a list of reports about build errors on Linux.