From bb3d5c561ca4b6b62162b8de3b046553427985d9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: kevin-s-ikegami <108323852+kevin-s-ikegami@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2026 12:03:51 +0900
Subject: [PATCH] docs: add source build instructions

---
 README.md | 25 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 25 insertions(+)

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index edf555e..77b8789 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -34,6 +34,31 @@ Known platforms without wheels:
 - PowerPC
 - Windows 32bit
 
+## Building from Source
+
+If you are installing fugashi from source, install MeCab first. The build uses
+`mecab-config` on Unix-like platforms to find the MeCab headers and libraries.
+If `mecab-config` is not on your `PATH`, the build will fail with an error
+asking whether MeCab is installed.
+
+On Linux or macOS, a typical local development setup looks like this:
+
+```sh
+python -m venv .venv
+. .venv/bin/activate
+python -m pip install --upgrade pip
+python -m pip install -e '.[unidic-lite]'
+python -c "from fugashi import Tagger; print(Tagger('-Owakati').parse('麩菓子'))"
+```
+
+The editable install builds the Cython extension in place. Installing the
+`unidic-lite` extra is not required for compilation, but it gives fugashi a
+dictionary so you can immediately verify that the built package works.
+
+If you need to build from source on Windows, install MeCab from
+[@chezou's fork](https://github.com/chezou/mecab) first, then run the same
+editable install command in your Python environment.
+
 ## Usage
 
 ```python