Compiling Software on the Firewall

pfSense® software intentionally does not include a proper environment for compiling software (make, headers/includes, sources, etc) on the installed firewall. Those tools are left out for security and capacity reasons.

A virtual machine or separate system can be setup to compile software, and then the compiled binaries/packages/software can be moved over to the firewall.

When doing this, install a version of FreeBSD that matches up with the version of pfSense software currently in use. A list can be found here: Versions of pfSense and FreeBSD

Alternately, install pre-compiled FreeBSD packages as described here: Installing FreeBSD Packages