Here are step-by-step instructions on how to build SQLite from canonical source on any modern machine that isn't Windows. These notes are tested (on 2024-10-11) on Ubuntu and on MacOS, but they are general and should work on most any modern unix platform. See the companion document () for guidance on building for Windows.
Install a C-compiler. GCC or Clang both work fine. If you are reading this document, you've probably already done that.
(Optional): Install TCL development libraries. In this note, we'll do a private install in the $HOME/local directory, but you can make adjustments to install TCL wherever you like. This document assumes you are working with TCL version 9.0. See also the document that contains more details on compiling Tcl for use with SQLite.
Download the SQLite source tree and unpack it. CD into the toplevel directory of the source tree.
Run: ./configure --enable-all --with-tclsh=$HOME/local/bin/tclsh9.0
You do not need to use --with-tclsh if the tclsh you want to use is the first one on your PATH or if you are building without TCL.
Run the “Makefile” makefile with an appropriate target. Examples:
It is not required that you run the “tclextension-install” target prior to running tests. However, the tests will run more smoothly if you do. The version of SQLite used for the TCL extension does not need to correspond to the version of SQLite under test. So you can install the SQLite TCL extension once, and then use it to test many different versions of SQLite.
For a debugging build of the CLI, where the “.treetrace” and “.wheretrace” commands work, add the the --with-debug argument to configure.