Install Vector from source

This page covers installing Vector from source using the native toolchain for the host.

Vector can also be compiled to a static binary for Linux for x86_64, ARM64, and ARMv7 architectures. See compiling using Docker for details.

{{< warning >}} We recommend installing Vector through a supported platform, package manager, or pre-built archive if possible. These handle permissions, directory creation, and other intricacies covered in the Next Steps section. {{< /warning >}}

linkInstallation

linkLinux

Install Rust:

1curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh -s -- -y --default-toolchain stable

Install compilation dependencies, specifically C and C++ compilers (GCC or Clang) and GNU make if they aren't pre-installed on your system.

Download Vector's source:

1# Latest ({{< version >}})
2mkdir -p vector && \
3  curl -sSfL --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 https://api.github.com/repos/timberio/vector/tarball/v{{< version >}} | \
4  tar xzf - -C vector --strip-components=1
5
6# Master
7mkdir -p vector && \
8  curl -sSfL --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 https://github.com/timberio/vector/archive/master.tar.gz | \
9  tar xzf - -C vector --strip-components=1

Change into your Vector directory:

1cd vector

Compile Vector:

1[FEATURES="<flag1>,<flag2>,..."] make build

The FEATURES environment variable is optional. You can override the default features using this variable. See feature flags for more info.

When finished, the Vector binary is placed in target/<target>/release/vector. If you're building Vector on your Mac, for example, the target triple is x86_64-apple-darwin and the Vector binary will be located at target/x86_64-apple-darwin/release/vector.

Finally, you can start Vector:

1target/<target>/release/vector --config config/vector.toml

linkWindows

Install Rust using rustup. If you don't have VC++ build tools, the install will prompt you to install them.

Install Perl for Windows.

Add Perl to your PATH. In a Rust/MSVC environment (for example using x64 Native Tools Command Prompt) add the binary directory of Perl installed on the previous step to PATH. For example, for default installation of Strawberry Perl it is

1set PATH=%PATH%;C:\Strawberry\perl\bin

Get Vector's source using Git:

1# Latest
2git clone https://github.com/timberio/vector
3git checkout v{{< version >}}
4cd vector
5
6# Master
7git clone https://github.com/timberio/vector
8cd vector

Build Vector in release mode:

1set RUSTFLAGS=-Ctarget-feature=+crt-static
2cargo build --no-default-features --features default-msvc --release

Start Vector. After these steps, a binary vector.exe in target\release would be created. It can be started by running:

1.\target\release\vector --config config\vector.toml

linkDocker

You can build statically linked binaries of Vector for Linux using Docker. If you do so, the dependencies listed in the previous section aren't needed, as all of them would be automatically pulled by Docker.

First, download Vector's source:

1# Latest ({{< version >}})
2mkdir -p vector && \
3  curl -sSfL --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 https://api.github.com/repos/timberio/vector/tarball/v{{< version >}} | \
4  tar xzf - -C vector --strip-components=1
5
6# Master
7mkdir -p vector && \
8  curl -sSfL --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 https://github.com/timberio/vector/archive/master.tar.gz | \
9  tar xzf - -C vector --strip-components=1

Then build Vector using Docker:

1# Linux (x86_64)
2PASS_FEATURES=default-cmake ./scripts/docker-run.sh builder-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl make build
3
4# Linux (ARM64)
5PASS_FEATURES=default-cmake ./scripts/docker-run.sh builder-aarch64-unknown-linux-musl make build
6
7# Linux (ARMv7)
8PASS_FEATURES=default-cmake ./scripts/docker-run.sh builder-armv7-unknown-linux-musleabihf make build

The command above builds a Docker image with a Rust toolchain for a Linux target for the corresponding architecture using musl as the C library, then starts a container from this image, and then builds inside the container. The target binary is located at target/<target triple>/release/vector as in the previous case.

linkNext steps

linkConfiguring

The Vector configuration file is located at:

1config/vector.toml

Example configurations are located in config/vector/examples/*. You can learn more about configuring Vector in the Configuration documentation.

linkData directory

We recommend creating a data directory that Vector can use:

1mkdir /var/lib/vector

{{< warning >}} Make sure that this directory is writable by the vector process. {{< /warning >}}

Vector offers a global data_dir option that you can use to specify the path of your directory:

1data_dir = "/var/lib/vector" # default

linkService managers

Vector archives ship with service files in case you need them:

linkInit.d

To install Vector into Init.d, run:

1cp -av etc/init.d/vector /etc/init.d

linkSystemd

To install Vector into Systemd, run:

1cp -av etc/systemd/vector.service /etc/systemd/system

linkUpdating

To update Vector, follow the same installation instructions above.

linkHow it works

linkFeature flags

The following feature flags are supported via the FEATURES env var when executing make build:

1[FEATURES="<flag1>,<flag2>,..."] make build

There are three meta-features that can be used when compiling for the corresponding targets. If no features are specified, the default is used.

Feature	Description	Enabled by default?
default	Default set of features for *-unknown-linux-gnu and *-apple-darwin targets.	✅
default-cmake	Default set of features for *-unknown-linux-* targets which uses cmake and perl as build dependencies.
default-msvc	Default set of features for *-pc-windows-msvc targets. Requires cmake and perl as build dependencies.

Alternatively, for finer control over dependencies and operating system features, it is possible to use specific features from the list below:

Feature	Description	Included in default feature?
unix	Enables features that require cfg(unix) to be present on the platform, namely support for Unix domain sockets in the docker_logs source and jemalloc instead of the default memory allocator.	✅
vendored	Forces vendoring of OpenSSL and ZLib dependencies instead of using their versions installed in the system. Requires perl as a build dependency.	✅
leveldb-plain	Enables support for disk buffers using vendored LevelDB.	✅
leveldb-cmake	The same as leveldb-plain, but more portable. Requires cmake as a build dependency. Use this in case of compilation issues with leveldb-plain.
rdkafka-plain	Enables vendored librdkafka dependency, which is required for the kafka source and kafka sink.	✅
rdkafka-cmake	The same as rdkafka-plain but more portable. Requires cmake as a build dependency. Use this in case of compilation issues with rdkafka-plain.

In addition, it is possible to pick only a subset of Vector's components for the build using feature flags. In order to do it, it instead of default features one has to pass a comma-separated list of component features.

{{< details title="Click to see all component features" >}}

Vector component features

Name	Description
sources-apache_metrics	Enables building the apache_metrics source
sources-aws_kinesis_firehose	Enables building the aws_kinesis_firehose source
sources-docker_logs	Enables building the docker_logs source. Requires unix feature to be also enabled for support of Unix domain sockets.
sources-file	Enables building the file source.
sources-generator	Enables building the generator source
sources-host_metrics	Enables building the host_metrics source
sources-http	Enables building the http source
sources-journald	Enables building the journald source
sources-kafka	Enables building the kafka source. Requires rdkafka-plain or rdkafka-cmake feature to be also enabled.
sources-kubernetes_logs	Enables building the kubernetes_logs source
sources-heroku_logs	Enables building the heroku_logs source
sources-prometheus	Enables building the prometheus_scrape source
sources-socket	Enables building the socket source
sources-splunk_hec	Enables building the splunk_hec source
sources-statsd	Enables building the statsd source
sources-stdin	Enables building the stdin source
sources-syslog	Enables building the syslog source
sources-vector	Enables building the vector source
transforms-dedupe	Enables building the dedupe transform
transforms-filter	Enables building the filter transform
transforms-geoip	Enables building the geoip transform
transforms-log_to_metric	Enables building the log_to_metric transform
transforms-lua	Enables building the lua transform
transforms-metric_to_log	Enables building the metric_to_log transform
transforms-reduce	Enables building the reduce transform
transforms-remap	Enables building the remap transform
transforms-sample	Enables building the sample transform
transforms-route	Enables building the route transform
transforms-tag_cardinality_limit	Enables building the tag_cardinality_limit transform
sinks-aws_cloudwatch_logs	Enables building the aws_cloudwatch_logs sink
sinks-aws_cloudwatch_metrics	Enables building the aws_cloudwatch_metrics sink
sinks-aws_kinesis_firehose	Enables building the aws_kinesis_firehose sink
sinks-aws_kinesis_streams	Enables building the aws_kinesis_streams sink
sinks-aws_s3	Enables building the aws_s3 sink
sinks-azure_monitor_logs	Enables building the azure_monitor_logs sink
sinks-blackhole	Enables building the blackhole sink
sinks-clickhouse	Enables building the clickhouse sink
sinks-console	Enables building the console sink
sinks-datadog_logs	Enables building the datadog_logs sink
sinks-datadog_metrics	Enables building the datadog_metrics sink
sinks-elasticsearch	Enables building the elasticsearch sink
sinks-file	Enables building the file sink
sinks-gcp_cloud_storage	Enables building the gcp_cloud_storage sink
sinks-gcp_pubsub	Enables building the gcp_pubsub sink
sinks-gcp_stackdriver_logs	Enables building the gcp_stackdriver_logs sink
sinks-honeycomb	Enables building the honeycomb sink
sinks-http	Enables building the http sink
sinks-humio_logs	Enables building the humio_logs sink
sinks-humio_metrics	Enables building the humio_metrics sink
sinks-influxdb_logs	Enables building the influxdb_logs sink
sinks-influxdb_metrics	Enables building the influxdb_metrics sink
sinks-kafka	Enables building the kafka sink. Requires rdkafka-plain or rdkafka-cmake feature to be also enabled.
sinks-logdna	Enables building the logdna sink
sinks-loki	Enables building the loki sink
sinks-new_relic_logs	Enables building the new_relic_logs sink
sinks-papertrail	Enables building the papertrail sink
sinks-prometheus	Enables building the prometheus_exporter and prometheus_remote_write sinks
sinks-pulsar	Enables building the pulsar sink
sinks-sematext_logs	Enables building the sematext_logs sink
sinks-sematext_metrics	Enables building the sematext_metrics sink
sinks-socket	Enables building the socket sink
sinks-splunk_hec	Enables building the splunk_hec sink
sinks-statsd	Enables building the statsd sink
sinks-vector	Enables building the vector sink
{{< /details >}}