<p>The main advantage of building from the source is that you have the option of manually inspecting the code to make sure you trust that no one has inserted any nasty logic (in practice this won't be feasible unless you are already familiar with the code). </p>

<p>A second advantage is that if you want to get the latest and greatest improvements for your bitcoin software. The releases on bitcoin.org occur approximately every two months so if there was a change you'd like to use before the official release and building from source will let you do that.</p>

<p>If you were to checkout the source on branch 0.15 and <a href="https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/7c53587101eaf206a6a6a11a9398d43f139eadcf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">tag v0.15.0.1</a> and build that then theoretically you'd be running the equivalent logic to the latest release (as of 23 Sep 2017).</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-09-23T11:46:02.710Z
2017-09-23T11:46:02.710Z
sipsorcery
<p>I'm following instructions to install Bitcoin Client in Andreas Antonopoulous' <em>Mastering Bitcoin</em>.  In Chapter 3, the author details options of installing the bitcoin core from bitcoin.org or compiling it from the source code.  From a practical perspective, what is the difference?</p>

<p>What do I lose by just installing it from bitcoin.org?  (Since that seems easier than making sure that I have all required dependencies in Linux)</p>

<bitcoin-core>
Difference between downloading bitcoire core from bitcoin.org and compiling from Github
matsuo_basho
# Difference between downloading bitcoire core from bitcoin.org and compiling from Github

(Asked by: username_0 on 2017-09-23)

I'm following instructions to install Bitcoin Client in Andreas Antonopoulous' *Mastering Bitcoin*. In Chapter 3, the author details options of installing the bitcoin core from bitcoin.org or compiling it from the source code. From a practical perspective, what is the difference?

What do I lose by just installing it from bitcoin.org? (Since that seems easier than making sure that I have all required dependencies in Linux)

**Tags:** bitcoin-core


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2017-09-23. Score: 1 | Accepted answer

The main advantage of building from the source is that you have the option of manually inspecting the code to make sure you trust that no one has inserted any nasty logic (in practice this won't be feasible unless you are already familiar with the code).

A second advantage is that if you want to get the latest and greatest improvements for your bitcoin software. The releases on bitcoin.org occur approximately every two months so if there was a change you'd like to use before the official release and building from source will let you do that.

If you were to checkout the source on branch 0.15 and [tag v0.15.0.1](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/7c53587101eaf206a6a6a11a9398d43f139eadcf) and build that then theoretically you'd be running the equivalent logic to the latest release (as of 23 Sep 2017).


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