3.2 KiB
Installing & building
System requirements
| Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| Operating systems | macOS 12+, Ubuntu 20.04+/Debian 10+, or Windows 11 via WSL2 |
| Git (optional, recommended) | 2.23+ for built-in PR helpers |
| RAM | 4-GB minimum (8-GB recommended) |
Install the latest release on macOS or Linux
# macOS or Linux
curl -fsSL https://chatgpt.com/codex/install.sh | sh
Windows direct installer support is coming soon. Until then, run Codex on Windows 11 via WSL2.
The direct installer downloads the latest matching GitHub Release package for macOS or Linux and
places both codex and rg in a user-local directory.
DotSlash
The GitHub Release also contains a DotSlash file for the Codex CLI named codex. Using a DotSlash file makes it possible to make a lightweight commit to source control to ensure all contributors use the same version of an executable, regardless of what platform they use for development.
Build from source
# Clone the repository and navigate to the root of the Cargo workspace.
git clone https://github.com/openai/codex.git
cd codex/codex-rs
# Install the Rust toolchain, if necessary.
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh -s -- -y
source "$HOME/.cargo/env"
rustup component add rustfmt
rustup component add clippy
# Install helper tools used by the workspace justfile:
cargo install just
# Optional: install nextest for the `just test` helper
cargo install --locked cargo-nextest
# Build Codex.
cargo build
# Launch the TUI with a sample prompt.
cargo run --bin codex -- "explain this codebase to me"
# After making changes, use the root justfile helpers (they default to codex-rs):
just fmt
just fix -p <crate-you-touched>
# Run the relevant tests (project-specific is fastest), for example:
cargo test -p codex-tui
# If you have cargo-nextest installed, `just test` runs the test suite via nextest:
just test
# Avoid `--all-features` for routine local runs because it increases build
# time and `target/` disk usage by compiling additional feature combinations.
# If you specifically want full feature coverage, use:
cargo test --all-features
Tracing / verbose logging
Codex is written in Rust, so it honors the RUST_LOG environment variable to configure its logging behavior.
The TUI defaults to RUST_LOG=codex_core=info,codex_tui=info,codex_rmcp_client=info and log messages are written to ~/.codex/log/codex-tui.log by default. For a single run, you can override the log directory with -c log_dir=... (for example, -c log_dir=./.codex-log).
tail -F ~/.codex/log/codex-tui.log
By comparison, the non-interactive mode (codex exec) defaults to RUST_LOG=error, but messages are printed inline, so there is no need to monitor a separate file.
See the Rust documentation on RUST_LOG for more information on the configuration options.