Build from source

The package repos are the supported path (Install the Host). Build from source when your release is older than a package supports (Ubuntu before 26.04, Debian 12, a Fedora without a repo group), or to hack on it. A source build gets no packaged units and no clean updates — you wire the service up by hand (Running as a service shows the unit).

Two build features matter on every distro: punktfunk-host/nvenc (direct NVENC on NVIDIA) and punktfunk-host/vulkan-encode (Vulkan Video on AMD/Intel). They're what the packaged builds use; without them the host falls back to the slower libav backends. Rust comes from rustup if you don't have it:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Ubuntu / Debian

The packaged host is built against FFmpeg 8. Ubuntu 26.04's and Debian 13's libavcodec-dev are new enough; Ubuntu 24.04's is FFmpeg 6.1 — build FFmpeg 8 yourself first there (what ci/rust-ci-noble.Dockerfile does), or stick with the packaged host.

sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config cmake clang libclang-dev nasm git curl \
  pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber libpipewire-0.3-dev libspa-0.2-dev \
  libwayland-dev wayland-protocols libxkbcommon-dev libopus-dev \
  libdrm-dev libgbm-dev libgl-dev libegl-dev libgles-dev mesa-common-dev libva-dev \
  ffmpeg libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev libavfilter-dev libavdevice-dev \
  libnvidia-egl-wayland1 libnvidia-egl-gbm1 libei-dev
git clone https://git.unom.io/unom/punktfunk.git && cd punktfunk
cargo build --release --locked \
  --features punktfunk-host/nvenc,punktfunk-host/vulkan-encode \
  -p punktfunk-host

Fedora

sudo dnf install gcc gcc-c++ make cmake clang clang-devel nasm git pkgconf-pkg-config \
  pipewire-devel wayland-devel wayland-protocols-devel libxkbcommon-devel opus-devel \
  libdrm-devel mesa-libgbm-devel mesa-libGL-devel mesa-libEGL-devel mesa-libGLES-devel libva-devel \
  ffmpeg-devel libei-devel
git clone https://git.unom.io/unom/punktfunk.git && cd punktfunk
cargo build --release --locked \
  --features punktfunk-host/nvenc,punktfunk-host/vulkan-encode \
  -p punktfunk-host

ffmpeg-devel must be RPM Fusion's (with NVENC), not ffmpeg-free-devel. mesa-libGL-devel isn't optional — the zero-copy GPU path links libGL, and without it the build fails at link time with cannot find -lGL. To build an RPM instead, use the same toolchain CI does: docker build --build-arg FEDORA_VERSION=NN -f ci/fedora-rpm.Dockerfile -t pf-rpm ci, then run packaging/rpm/build-rpm.sh inside it.

Arch (PKGBUILD)

The split PKGBUILD in packaging/arch/ produces punktfunk-host and punktfunk-client; set PF_WITH_WEB=1 to also build punktfunk-web and PF_WITH_SCRIPTING=1 for punktfunk-scripting (both need bun):

git clone https://git.unom.io/unom/punktfunk.git && cd punktfunk/packaging/arch
PF_SRCDIR="$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)" makepkg -f --holdver   # builds the working tree, no git fetch
sudo pacman -U punktfunk-host-*.pkg.tar.zst

NVENC/EGL come from nvidia-utils; on a GPU-less builder, symlink the CUDA stub into the link path first (the PKGBUILD header documents this). Packager notes, the Fedora→Arch dependency map and the sysext mechanism: packaging/arch. For a SteamOS host don't use the PKGBUILD — the on-device installer builds ABI-matched to the running OS.

Running what you built

The binary lands at target/release/punktfunk-host. Run it from inside your desktop session — it auto-detects the compositor:

target/release/punktfunk-host serve              # secure native-only host
target/release/punktfunk-host serve --gamestream # + Moonlight compat (trusted LAN only)

To run it as a user service, copy scripts/punktfunk-host.service to ~/.config/systemd/user/ (it already points at %h/punktfunk/target/release/punktfunk-host), then systemctl --user daemon-reload && systemctl --user enable --now punktfunk-host. The other workspace members (punktfunk-web, punktfunk-scripting, the client) build the same way — the root README covers the dev loop.