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.

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.

Installation

Linux

Install Rust:

curl --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:

# Latest (0.42.0)
mkdir -p vector && \
  curl -sSfL --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 https://api.github.com/repos/vectordotdev/vector/tarball/v0.42.0 | \
  tar xzf - -C vector --strip-components=1

# Master
mkdir -p vector && \
  curl -sSfL --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 https://github.com/vectordotdev/vector/archive/master.tar.gz | \
  tar xzf - -C vector --strip-components=1

Change into your Vector directory:

cd vector

Compile Vector:

[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:

target/<target>/release/vector --config config/vector.yaml

Windows

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

Install and add CMake to PATH.

Install and add Protoc to PATH.

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

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

Get Vector’s source using Git:

# Latest
git clone https://github.com/vectordotdev/vector
git checkout v0.42.0
cd vector

# Master
git clone https://github.com/vectordotdev/vector
cd vector

Build Vector in release mode:

set RUSTFLAGS=-Ctarget-feature=+crt-static
cargo 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:

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

Docker

You can build statically linked binaries of Vector for Linux using cross in 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:

# Latest (0.42.0)
mkdir -p vector && \
  curl -sSfL --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 https://api.github.com/repos/vectordotdev/vector/tarball/v0.42.0 | \
  tar xzf - -C vector --strip-components=1

# Master
mkdir -p vector && \
  curl -sSfL --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 https://github.com/vectordotdev/vector/archive/master.tar.gz | \
  tar xzf - -C vector --strip-components=1

Second, install cross.

And then build Vector using cross:

# Linux (x86_64)
make package-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl-all

# Linux (ARM64)
make package-aarch64-unknown-linux-musl-all

# Linux (ARMv7)
make package-armv7-unknown-linux-muslueabihf-all

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.

Next steps

Configuring

The Vector configuration file is located at:

config/vector.yaml

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

Data directory

We recommend creating a data directory that Vector can use:

mkdir /var/lib/vector

Make sure that this directory is writable by the vector process.

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

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

Service managers

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

Init.d

To install Vector into Init.d, run:

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

Systemd

To install Vector into Systemd, run:

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

Updating

To update Vector, follow the same installation instructions above.

How it works

Feature flags

Vector supports many feature flags to customize which features are included in a build. By default, all sources, transforms, and sinks are enabled. To view a complete list of features, they are listed under “[features]” here.