Installation

Installing with pre-built binaries#

The easiest way to install YARA-X is to download one of the pre-built binaries distributed with each release.

Pre-built binaries are available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Download the appropriate archive, extract it to your preferred location, and you’re ready to run YARA-X.

Installing from source#

On macOS, you can also use brew:

brew install yara-x

For building YARA-X, you will need a recent version of Rust. Follow the instructions in the Rust official site.

Once Rust is installed on your system, run:

git clone https://github.com/VirusTotal/yara-x
cd yara-x
cargo install --path cli

Building the documentation#

To build the YARA-X documentation, you will need Node.js and either npm or pnpm installed.

cd yara-x/site
pnpm install
pnpm run build

Building Python package#

To build the YARA-X Python package, create and activate a virtual environment:

pip install virtualenv
virtualenv venv
source venv/bin/activate

Install the build dependencies:

pip install maturin

Build the package with support for the test_proto2 and test_proto3 modules:

maturin build \
  --manifest-path py/Cargo.toml \
  --release \
  --features=test_proto2-module,test_proto3-module

Install the generated wheel:

pip install target/wheels/yara_x-*.whl