Compile Blender 2.90 on Linux

Blender 2.90 is currently in alpha stage shipping with new features and improvements, here is the complete release note of changes that will take place in this release.

First, we need to get the dependencies and packages required to build Blender 2.90 alpha

Initial dependencies for Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint and Elementary OS.

sudo apt update

sudo apt install git build-essential

Initial dependencies for Fedora/CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

sudo dnf update

sudo dnf install @development-tools git

Create the blender-git directory

mkdir ~/blender-git

Set blender-git as the current directory

cd ~/blender-git

Cloning the repository locally.

git clone https://git.blender.org/blender.git

Download pre-compiled libraries.

The pre-compiled libraries for Intel and AMD will help you compile and build a feature complete Blender much faster. The libraries are built on CentOS 7 , but they are compatible and work fine on any Linux. (I have tested this on Linux Mint 20).

mkdir ~/blender-git/lib

cd ~/blender-git/lib

svn checkout https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/trunk/lib/linux_centos7_x86_64

For automatic dependency installation follow this guide.

Let’s update and build Blender 2.90

cd ~/blender-git/blender

make update

make

The make process will take time, the speed depends on the CPU core count, memory, and disk IO speed, CPU cores, the higher, the faster compiling speed.

After the process is complete the Blender executable will be located in.

~/blender-git/build_linux/bin

If building fails after an update, it sometimes helps to remove the ~/blender-git/build_linux folder to get a completely clean build.

rm -rf ~/blender-git/build_linux

Then re-run the make update and make command.

Enjoy using Blender.