How to build CARLA on Linux

Install the build tools and dependencies

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential clang-3.9 git cmake ninja-build python3-requests python-dev tzdata sed curl wget unzip autoconf libtool

To avoid compatibility issues between Unreal Engine and the CARLA dependencies, the best configuration is to compile everything with the same compiler version and C++ runtime library. We use clang 3.9 and LLVM's libc++. You may need to change your default clang version to compile Unreal

$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/clang++ clang++ /usr/lib/llvm-3.9/bin/clang++ 100
$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/clang clang /usr/lib/llvm-3.9/bin/clang 100

Build Unreal Engine

Download and compile Unreal Engine 4.18. Here we will assume you install it at "~/UnrealEngine_4.18", but you can install it anywhere, just replace the path where necessary.

$ git clone --depth=1 -b 4.18 https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine.git ~/UnrealEngine_4.18
$ cd ~/UnrealEngine_4.18
$ ./Setup.sh && ./GenerateProjectFiles.sh && make

Check Unreal's documentation "Building On Linux" if any of the steps above fail.

Build CARLA

Clone or download the project from our GitHub repository

$ git clone https://github.com/carla-simulator/carla

Note that the master branch contains the latest fixes and features, for the latest stable code may be best to switch to the stable branch.

Run the setup script to download the content and build all dependencies. It takes a while

$ ./Setup.sh

Once it's done it should print "Success" if everything went well.

To build CARLA, use the rebuild script. This script deletes all intermediate files, rebuilds whole CARLA, and launches the editor. Use it too for making a clean rebuild of CARLA

$ UE4_ROOT=~/UnrealEngine_4.18 ./Rebuild.sh

It looks at the environment variable UE4_ROOT to find the right version of Unreal Engine. You can also add this variable to your "~/.bashrc" or similar.

Later, if you need to compile some changes without doing a full rebuild, you can use the Makefile generated in the Unreal project folder

$ cd Unreal/CarlaUE4
$ make CarlaUE4Editor

Updating CARLA

Every new release of CARLA we release a new package with the latest changes in the CARLA assets. To download the latest version, run the "Update" script

$ git pull
$ ./Update.sh

Launching the editor

To open the editor once the project is already built

$ cd Unreal/CarlaUE4
$ ~/UnrealEngine_4.18/Engine/Binaries/Linux/UE4Editor "$PWD/CarlaUE4.uproject"

Test (Optional)

A set of unit tests is available for testing the CarlaServer library (note that these tests launch the python client, they require python3 and protobuf for python3 installed, as well as ports 2000 and 4000 available)

$ make check