Get source and compile
This information is for people who want to work with the source code for the viewer.
Open Source Viewer
Viewer code is hosted by GitHub using git.
Other repositories where development for future features can be seen are listed on the Release Notes Repositories page. If you have not worked with GitHub or distributed version control you may be interested in GitHub's introductory material.
Checking out Code
To clone the current release repository:
git clone https://github.com/secondlife/viewer.git
Compiling
Per platform instructions are available in these topics:
Notes
Autobuild
Autobuild is the new Linden Lab framework to maintain and build everything, from viewer to 3rd party libraries.
Instructions:
Channels and Versions
Channels are just groupings of versions. Linden Lab uses channels to track and supply updates for Project, Beta, and Release Viewers separately.
On login, the combination of channel plus version is checked against a set of rules in the Viewer Version Management service. Within each channel, some versions are allowed and some are blocked. Viewers are blocked if they are too old, are unsafe (security issues), incompatible (the protocol has been changed in some fundamental way), or are a test version and Linden Lab only wants data from the most recent. See Viewer Integration and Release Processes for an explanation of how different versions are managed by Linden Lab.
If you are building a viewer, the Policy on Third Party Viewers requires that you set your own channel name.
See:
- Channel and Version Requirements
- a detailed explanation and official policy on channels and versions in Second Life, and an explanation of how to set your channel name when building.