eXist-db itself is written in and qualified with Java 21. The build system is Apache Maven. If you're not familiar with Git, we recommend this excellent online interactive tutorial.
To build eXist-db:
- Checkout the Git Repository
- Execute a Maven to compile eXist-db
$ git clone https://github.com/eXist-db/exist.git
$ cd exist
$ git checkout master
$ mvn -DskipTests package
From here, you now have a compiled version of eXist-db in the exist-distribution/target
folder that you may use just as you would an installed version of eXist-db. An installer is also build and present uin exist-installer/target
for easy installation elsewhere.
Useful build switches:
-Ddocker=true
: builds the docker image-DskipTests
: skips running tests-Ddependency-check.skip=true
: skips validating dependencies
Further build options can be found at: eXist-db Build Documentation.
NOTE:
In the above example, we switched the current (checked-out) branch from develop
to master
. We use the GitFlow for eXist-db process:
develop
is the current (and stable) work-in-progress (the next release)master
is the latest release The choice of which to use is up to you.