You should only build from source if you need to modify Fresco code itself. Most applications should simply include Fresco in their project.

Prerequisites

The following tools must be installed on your system in order to build Fresco:

  1. The Android SDK
  2. From the Android SDK Manager, install/upgrade the latest Support Library and Support Repository. Both are found in the Extras section.
  3. The Android NDK. Version 10c or later is required.
  4. The git version control system.

You don’t need to download Gradle itself; the build scripts or Android Studio will do that for you.

Fresco does not support source builds with Eclipse, Ant, or Maven. We do not plan to ever add such support.

Configuring Gradle

Both command-line and Android Studio users need to edit the gradle.properties file. This is normally located in your home directory, in a subdirectory called .gradle. If it is not already there, create it.

On Unix-like systems, including Mac OS X, add this line:

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ndk.path=/path/to/android_ndk/r10e

On Windows systems, add this line:

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ndk.path=C\:\\path\\to\\android_ndk\\r10e

On both platforms, add these lines:

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2
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org.gradle.daemon=true
org.gradle.parallel=true
org.gradle.configureondemand=true

Windows’ backslashes and colons need to be escaped in order for Gradle to read them correctly.

Getting the source

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git clone https://github.com/facebook/fresco.git

This will create a directory fresco where the code will live.

Building from the Command Line

On Unix-like systems, cd to the directory containing Fresco. Run the following command:

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./gradlew build

On Windows, open a Command Prompt, cd to the directory containing Fresco, and type in this command:

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gradlew.bat build

Building from Android Studio

From Android Studio’s Quick Start dialog, click Import Project. Navigate to the directory containing Fresco and click on the build.gradle file.

Android Studio should build Fresco automatically.

Offline builds

The first time you build Fresco, your computer must be connected to the Internet. Incremental builds can use Gradle’s --offline option.

Troubleshooting

Could not find com.android.support:…:x.x.x.

Make sure your Support Repository is up to date (see Prerequisites above).

Windows support

We try our best to support building on Windows but we can’t commit to it. We do not have a Windows build set up on our CI servers and none of us is using a Windows computer so the builds can break without us noticing it.

Please raise github issues if the Windows build is broken or submit a pull request with the fix. We do our best but we’d like the community’s help to keep this up to date.

Contributing code upstream

Please see our CONTRIBUTING page.