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> Sharing and Releasing Projects > Containers > Container How To Guides > Building the Linux Container Images from Source

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Building the Linux Container Images from Source

How to build the Linux container images that ship with Unreal Engine from source.

Choose your operating system:

Windows

macOS

Linux

Prerequisite Topics

In order to understand and use the content on this page, make sure you are familiar with the following topics:

On this page

Requirements
Installing Docker
Building the Images for an Official Engine Release
Building the Images for a Custom Version of the Engine
Modifying Advanced Build Parameters

All container images that are included with Unreal Engine have prebuilt versions available for download from GitHub Container Registry. It is only necessary to build the images from source if you want to create development images for a custom version of Unreal Engine or to make modifications to the image source code.

Requirements

To build the Linux container images that are included with Unreal Engine, your computer will need to meet the hardware and software requirements listed in the Linux containers section of the Hardware and Software Requirements page.

Building the Linux container images from source under Windows is not supported. Although it is possible to build the images using either Docker Desktop or WSL2 under Windows 10 and Windows 11, this process requires additional configuration and troubleshooting to function correctly, and Epic Games does not provide support for doing so. Instead, you should build the Linux container images under Linux, either installed in a virtual machine or directly on the host machine.

Installing Docker

Docker is the recommended tool for building and running the container images that are included with Unreal Engine. The steps for installing Docker will depend on the operating system that you are using. The links below provide instructions on how to do this on each platform it is available on:

Windows: Install Docker Desktop for Windows
macOS: Install Docker Desktop for Mac
Linux: Follow the appropriate instructions to install Docker Engine for your specific Linux distribution:

Building the Images for an Official Engine Release

If you have downloaded the Unreal Engine source code from GitHub then you will need to run Setup.sh from the root of the source tree to download the engine's binary dependencies, just as you would when building the engine from source. If you do not perform this step, then the files required for building container images will be missing.

Navigate to the following subdirectory of the Unreal Engine source code:

Engine/Extras/Containers/Dockerfiles/linux

The build scripts for the Linux container images search for Git credentials in files called username.txt and password.txt :

Create the username.txt file and populate it with your GitHub username.
Create the password.txt file and populate it with your GitHub personal access token.

To build the Linux container images for a given release of the Unreal Engine, run the command shown below in a Bash shell, replacing ENGINE_RELEASE with the appropriate release number (e.g. "4.27.0"):

./build.sh ENGINE_RELEASE

This will build both the runtime images for Linux and the development images for Linux, followed by images for specific use cases such as Pixel Streaming . The development images will take the longest to build, since they download the Unreal Engine source code from GitHub and create an Installed Build of the Engine.

Building the Images for a Custom Version of the Engine

The build scripts only support retrieving the Unreal Engine source code from Git. Other version control systems such as Perforce are not supported. It is possible to use other version control systems by manually modifying the Dockerfiles for the development images but Epic Games does not provide support for doing so.

The build scripts for the Linux container images support specifying a custom Git repository and branch from which to retrieve the Unreal Engine source code instead of using the official GitHub repository. Custom repositories might include GitHub forks of the official Unreal Engine repository or private repositories stored on on-premises Git servers maintained by an organization for internal use.

How you populate the Git credentials in the username.txt and password.txt files will depend upon the type of Git repository being used:

GitHub fork:
- Use your GitHub username and personal access token.
Custom Git server:
- Populate the username.txt file with your Git username.
- Populate the password.txt file with your Git password.

To build the Linux container images for a specific branch of a Git repository, run the command shown below in a Bash shell, replacing BRANCH with the name of the branch and REPOSITORY with the HTTPS URL for the Git repository (e.g. "https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine.git" ):

./build.sh BRANCH REPOSITORY

Modifying Advanced Build Parameters

The build script build.sh includes the following advanced build parameters that can be modified by manually editing the file:

BASEIMAGE : This is a string that specifies the Linux base image that will be used when building the development images. This value defaults to an Ubuntu base image provided by NVIDIA that includes the OpenGL development headers.