Building from source

You only need to build from source if you want to modify Hawkeye, run pre-release code, or target a platform without a package (currently Windows). For everyday use, the Homebrew formula or .deb package described in Installation is the faster path.

INFO

Clone with --recursive. Hawkeye uses the MAVLink c_library_v2 as a submodule. If you forget and hit fatal: destination path 'c_library_v2' already exists and is not an empty directory, fix it with git submodule update --init.

macOS

brew install cmake git
git clone --recursive https://github.com/PX4/Hawkeye.git
cd Hawkeye
make release

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)

sudo apt-get install -y cmake git build-essential \
  libgl1-mesa-dev libx11-dev libxrandr-dev \
  libxinerama-dev libxcursor-dev libxi-dev

git clone --recursive https://github.com/PX4/Hawkeye.git
cd Hawkeye
make release

Windows

Requires Visual Studio 2022 with the "Desktop development with C++" workload, CMake, and Git.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/PX4/Hawkeye.git
cd Hawkeye
make release

Binary location

After a source build, the binary is at:

Platform	Path
macOS	build/hawkeye
Linux	build/hawkeye
Windows	build\Release\hawkeye.exe

Makefile targets

Target	Description
make	Debug build (default)
make release	Release build
make run	Build and launch the viewer
make test	Build and run all tests (see Testing)
make test-core	Build and run core tests only (no raylib, fast CI path)
make sanitize	Build with AddressSanitizer and UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer enabled
make clean	Remove the build directory

The BUILD_TYPE variable defaults to Debug; override with make BUILD_TYPE=Release or use the release target. Extra CMake flags can be passed via CMAKE_EXTRA.

Verifying the build

Launch the binary with no arguments:

./build/hawkeye

A window opens with the default quadrotor model on a grid backdrop, waiting for MAVLink telemetry on UDP port 19410. If the window doesn't appear, see Troubleshooting.

Next steps

• Testing — Running the ctest suite and sanitizer builds
• First SITL run — Connect the built binary to PX4 SIH