Building Sagemath without Conda

[Aatman Supkar]

I want to set up Sage for development, but I don't want to use Conda due to its system-wide installs. What all methods for building Sage currently exist?

[Grégory Vanuxem]

Hi,

Why not looking first at:

https://github.com/sagemath/sage#instructions-to-build-from-source

? 

Greg

PS: I don't think Conda is system-wide by default, I use it regularly without root privileges. 

Le lun. 30 mars 2026, 14:19, Aatman Supkar <aatman...@gmail.com> a écrit :

I want to set up Sage for development, but I don't want to use Conda due to its system-wide installs. What all methods for building Sage currently exist?

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[Seohyeon “Alex” Lee]

This documentation has more detailed instructions about building without conda.

https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/installation/source-distro.html

What OS are you building Sage on?

[Aatman Supkar]

The build form source guides are helpful to some extent (I have tried both at some point), but I also find it breaking something or the other everytime. Just to be sure, I tried it again, after following the readme to the best of my ability (I don't know how to set the config variables, although I did make a rather clean PATH this time).

I'll attach a config.log if you can help me find the exact problem.

I'm using a MacOS 15.7.5, and am currently using Homebrew. But I have also been trying to abandon Homebrew and shift to Nix, so builds using that would be much appreciated.

[Dima Pasechnik]

As you can imagine, there is no way to tell what exactly is going on
from your "it breaking something or the other".

We also need logs/install.log to see the actual errors.

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[Aatman Supkar]

Here you go. Should I be adding both config.log and install.log while facing compilation issues in general?

[Aatman Supkar]

Based on my attempts so far, my best guess is that my environment is probably polluted. Would people have exact lists of environments which let them replicate the process describe in the README.md of https://github.com/sagemath/sage? I have performed every step from 1 to 14 to the letter, except steps 8 (not sure exactly what sanitation constitutes) and 10 (device storage issues).

[Seohyeon “Alex” Lee]

Hi Aatman, heads up that the README instructions right now are written in a confusing way and might not lead to a successful build. I'm actually working on PR to remedy that issue: https://github.com/sagemath/sage/pull/41835. Since README is compromised, there might not be an environment where you can replicate the process.

[Dima Pasechnik]

Make sure you don't have an active Conda environment.

it's crucial that PATH, CPATH, LIBRARY_PATH, and PKG_CONFIG_PATH don't contain something funny.

It's best to have PATH as minimal as possible (in particular it should not have any Conda or ~/.local, or Nix or some similar stuff like macports things in it)

 and CPATH, LIBRARY_PATH, and PKG_CONFIG_PATH empty before doing

source .homebrew-build-env

and then the rest of the build.

HTH

Dima

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[Aatman Supkar]

Thanks for the help. I'll be looking forward to a patched README.
I have sanitised the environment as suggested, but the build fails regardless. PFA config.log and install.log.

While this problem is being sorted out, might I ask what's the best way for me to attempt contributing through a Macbook? My end goal is to be able to manage the project via nix, but I would also like solutions that work just for the time being. I'm told docker is excellent at creating a consistent isolated environment, but I have never used it before.