Building ThingsBoard from Sources

This guide walks you through downloading and building ThingsBoard from source code. Instructions are tested on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and CentOS 8/9.

Required tools

Java

ThingsBoard requires Java 17 or newer to build. See the Install Java (OpenJDK) step of the Ubuntu guide for installation instructions.

Verify the installation:

java -version

Maven

ThingsBoard requires Maven 3.1.0 or newer.

Ubuntu
CentOS

sudo apt-get install maven

sudo yum install maven

Source code

Clone the ThingsBoard repository from GitHub:

# checkout latest release branch
git clone -b release-4.3 https://github.com/thingsboard/thingsboard.git --depth 1
cd thingsboard

Building Docker images on Windows requires LF line endings. Before cloning the repo, set the Git core.autocrlf configuration option to input:

git config --global core.autocrlf input

Failing to do so may cause runtime errors when running Docker images.

Build the project

From the project root directory, run:

mvn clean install -DskipTests

This command builds the project, skips unit and integration tests, and produces installation artifacts.

Build local Docker images (optional)

To build local Docker images for ThingsBoard services, ensure Docker is installed. Then run:

mvn clean install -DskipTests -Ddockerfile.skip=false

List the built images:

docker images

Build artifacts

After a successful build, installation packages are available in:

application/target

This directory contains:

.deb packages for Debian/Ubuntu
.rpm packages for CentOS/RHEL
Windows installation packages

Running tests (optional)

This requires Docker and Docker Compose. Make sure Docker is configured to run as a non-root user.

Unit and integration tests

mvn clean install

Black-box tests

Black-box tests are located in the msa/black-box-tests directory. Follow the instructions in the README to execute them.

Tips and tricks

Clean Maven cache:

rm -rf ~/.m2/repository

Clean Gradle cache:

rm -rf ~/.gradle/caches/

Clean node modules:

rm -rf ui-ngx/node_modules

Build in parallel, format headers, build Docker images:

mvn -T 0.8C license:format clean install -DskipTests -Ddockerfile.skip=false

Common build and runtime errors

Docker runtime error

If you see the following error when running a locally built Docker image:

Standard_init_linux.go:175 exec user process caused no such file

This usually indicates incorrect line endings.

Solution: reconfigure Git to use LF line endings, re-clone the repository, and rebuild the Docker images. See the Source code section above for details.

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