Building Zed for macOS

Repository

After cloning the repository, ensure all git submodules are initialized:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Dependencies

• Install Rust
• Install Xcode from the macOS App Store, or from the Apple Developer website. Note this requires a developer account.

Ensure you launch XCode after installing, and install the MacOS components, which is the default option.

• Install Xcode command line tools

  xcode-select --install
  

• Ensure that the Xcode command line tools are using your newly installed copy of Xcode:

  sudo xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer
  

• Install the Rust wasm toolchain:

  rustup target add wasm32-wasi
  

Backend Dependencies

If you are developing collaborative features of Zed, you'll need to install the dependencies of zed's collab server:

• Install Postgres

• Install Livekit and Foreman

  brew install livekit foreman
  

Alternatively, if you have Docker installed you can bring up all the collab dependencies using Docker Compose:

docker compose up -d

Building Zed from Source

Once you have the dependencies installed, you can build Zed using Cargo.

For a debug build:

cargo run

For a release build:

cargo run --release

And to run the tests:

cargo test --workspace

Troubleshooting

Error compiling metal shaders

error: failed to run custom build command for gpui v0.1.0 (/Users/path/to/zed)`**

xcrun: error: unable to find utility "metal", not a developer tool or in PATH

Try sudo xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

Cargo errors claiming that a dependency is using unstable features

Try cargo clean and cargo build.