Building Factor from source is the recommended way to get Factor if you want to track development, because it saves bandwidth over downloading a binary every few days. It is also a requirement for contributors who wish to push patches to the Factor repository. New users and casual dabblers should use binaries if possible instead, to save time and effort.

Requirements

If you are using Linux, you may need to install development packages (gcc, libc headers, xorg development libraries, ...) before compiling Factor. If you are using Windows, you will need Cygwin. On Mac OS X, you will need Apple's developer tools.

You will also need git on all platforms.

Cloning a repository

Once you have installed git, you can clone a copy of the Factor repository:

git clone git://factorcode.org/git/factor.git

Cloning from behind a restrictive corporate firewall:

git clone http://factorcode.org/git/factor.git

Once you have a clone of the repository, there are two ways to build Factor; you can build a clean branch, or the bleeding-edge sources.