ollama/docs/development.md
Blake Mizerany 55ab9f371a
server/.../backoff,syncs: don't break builds without synctest (#9484)
Previously, developers without the synctest experiment enabled would see
build failures when running tests in some server/internal/internal
packages using the synctest package. This change makes the transition to
use of the package less painful but guards the use of the synctest
package with build tags.

synctest is enabled in CI. If a new change will break a synctest
package, it will break in CI, even if it does not break locally.

The developer docs have been updated to help with any confusion about
why package tests pass locally but fail in CI.
2025-03-03 16:45:40 -08:00

3.7 KiB

Development

Install prerequisites:

  • Go
  • C/C++ Compiler e.g. Clang on macOS, TDM-GCC (Windows amd64) or llvm-mingw (Windows arm64), GCC/Clang on Linux.

Then build and run Ollama from the root directory of the repository:

go run . serve

macOS (Apple Silicon)

macOS Apple Silicon supports Metal which is built-in to the Ollama binary. No additional steps are required.

macOS (Intel)

Install prerequisites:

  • CMake or brew install cmake

Then, configure and build the project:

cmake -B build
cmake --build build

Lastly, run Ollama:

go run . serve

Windows

Install prerequisites:

Then, configure and build the project:

cmake -B build
cmake --build build --config Release

Important

Building for ROCm requires additional flags:

cmake -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++
cmake --build build --config Release

Lastly, run Ollama:

go run . serve

Windows (ARM)

Windows ARM does not support additional acceleration libraries at this time. Do not use cmake, simply go run or go build.

Linux

Install prerequisites:

  • CMake or sudo apt install cmake or sudo dnf install cmake
  • (Optional) AMD GPU support
  • (Optional) NVIDIA GPU support

Important

Ensure prerequisites are in PATH before running CMake.

Then, configure and build the project:

cmake -B build
cmake --build build

Lastly, run Ollama:

go run . serve

Docker

docker build .

ROCm

docker build --build-arg FLAVOR=rocm .

Running tests

To run tests, use go test:

go test ./...

NOTE: In rare cirumstances, you may nedd to change a package using the new "synctest" package in go1.24.

If you do not have the "synctest" package enabled, you will not see build or test failures resulting from your change(s), if any, locally, but CI will break.

If you see failures in CI, you can either keep pushing changes to see if the CI build passes, or you can enable the "synctest" package locally to see the failures before pushing.

To enable the "synctest" package for testing, run the following command:

GOEXPERIMENT=synctest go test ./...

If you wish to enable synctest for all go commands, you can set the GOEXPERIMENT environment variable in your shell profile or by using:

go env -w GOEXPERIMENT=synctest

Which will enable the "synctest" package for all go commands without needing to set it for all shell sessions.

The synctest package is not required for production builds.

Library detection

Ollama looks for acceleration libraries in the following paths relative to the ollama executable:

  • ./lib/ollama (Windows)
  • ../lib/ollama (Linux)
  • . (macOS)
  • build/lib/ollama (for development)

If the libraries are not found, Ollama will not run with any acceleration libraries.