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.

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 (0.15.0)
mkdir -p vector && \
  curl -sSfL --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 https://api.github.com/repos/timberio/vector/tarball/v0.15.0 | \
  tar xzf - -C vector --strip-components=1

# Master
mkdir -p vector && \
  curl -sSfL --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 https://github.com/timberio/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.toml

Windows

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

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

Get Vector’s source using Git:

# Latest
git clone https://github.com/timberio/vector
git checkout v0.15.0
cd vector

# Master
git clone https://github.com/timberio/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 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 (0.15.0)
mkdir -p vector && \
  curl -sSfL --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 https://api.github.com/repos/timberio/vector/tarball/v0.15.0 | \
  tar xzf - -C vector --strip-components=1

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

Then build Vector using Docker:

# Linux (x86_64)
PASS_FEATURES=default-cmake ./scripts/docker-run.sh builder-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl make build

# Linux (ARM64)
PASS_FEATURES=default-cmake ./scripts/docker-run.sh builder-aarch64-unknown-linux-musl make build

# Linux (ARMv7)
PASS_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.

Next steps

Configuring

The Vector configuration file is located at:

config/vector.toml

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

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

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

[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.

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

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.