Compiling the viewer (MSVS2005)

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This page explains how you can compile the viewer on Microsoft Windows using Visual Studio 2005 or Visual C++ Express 2005. As of 1.21, Lindens are using VS2005.

Currently, only 32 bit binary is tested. There seems to be several trials to produce 64 bit Windows .EXE of the viewer. If you did, please write your experience on this wiki (regardless it was successful or not!)

The following explanation is adjusted for Viewer releases 1.16.0.5 and beyond. See an older version of this page for the Viewer releases 1.15 or before.

Preparing the Development Environment

Installing/Configuring VS2005

You need to setup the compiler and Microsoft Development tools as follows:

• Setup Microsoft Visual Studio

Getting other Development Tools

You will also need some open source development tools.

• Cygwin
  • When you run the cygwin setup utility make sure you have selected to install patchutils, flex, and bison (all located under "devel") which are not part of the default install. (If you missed one of these, the easiest thing to do is to re-run the entire installation.) Older releases (< r79209) had several hardcoded references that expect Cygwin to be installed at C:\cygwin in the project files, however current releases rely on the build environment configuration instead.
• ActivePython 2.3x or later - Latest Version seems to be 2.5.2.2. Compatibility with SL is unsure.
  • It is required but can be avoided if you are compiling 1.18 or later viewers. Either download and install or hack the prebuild.bat files as described in VWR-1267.
• ActivePerl was recommended for previous versions on this Wiki, but it currently appears, that it is not strictly necessary unless you are planning to build your own version of all libraries (which most likely you don't want to do). So for a start it may be safe to skip it.

  ActivePerl

Downloading Source Code

You can download the Viewer source cods on the source downloads page. You can also use a version control repository. If you're just starting out, it's probably best to get the latest Release version, rather than a Release Candidate, because the Release Candidates get updated quite often. But if you would rather not run across bugs that have already been fixed, go for the version control repository Trunk branch.

If you're downloading from the source downloads page, there are three packages to get: the source package, the artwork package, and the library package. In versions 1.20 and earlier, Linden packaged the library binaries in the Libs package; for 1.21 and beyond, only the fonts are there.

For 1.21 and beyond, the CMake develop.py script now downloads the libraries that were previously in the libs zip file. This saves developers who are tracking trunk from constantly downloading them every update and only downloads updated libraries.

For 1.20 and before, many of the libraries can either be compiled from source or downloaded from other sites (see below), but this will take hours and thus it is easiest to also get the package with libraries compiled by the Lindens.

WARNING:

• If the directory path you keep the SL source in has a space in it, the batch file that copies message_template.msg will fail. So, if you unzip or checkout the source tree into, e.g., "C:\Projects\Dir with space in name\Etc\linden", it won't work!
• You should also avoid using non-ASCII (national) characters in the paths, although some localized versions of the tool puts some as a default...
• Unzip or checkout your source tree into a directory that has as short full pathname as possible, since long paths cause some unexpected trouble during the build.

In other words, the easiest way to get this working is to get Source: Windows (CRLF), Source: Artwork and Libs: Windows from the source downloads page and unpack them all into the same directory/folder, which ideally would be a folder in (or near) the root directory with a short name like sl_1_21_6.

Installing Libraries

SL Viewer depends on some third party libraries. Some of them are open source, some others are not.

Open Source Libraries

You can download the pre-build open source libraries from LL. For versions 1.20 and earlier, they are available on the source downloads page. Unzip them into your SL viewer source code directory, maintaining the same directory structure.

Note: The VS2003 libraries provided in the source downloads do not fully work with VS2005 compiled binaries. They will compile with the viewer under VS2005, but the VS2003 libraries are not fully STL compliant. The differences of non-standard behavior in MSVS are the known cause.

The VS2003 libraries have vc71 in their names; the VS2005 libraries have vc80 in their names.

Alternatively, it may be possible to get the source files for the libraries and build by yourself. See the instruction for VS2003 users if you try it. Please note, however, it is not known that VS2005 can successfully compile the libraries. You have been warned. (If you can make it, please write the info on this wiki...)

Proprietary Libraries

Lindens does not inlcude the following proprietary libraries. You will need to follow the instructions to acquire below and copy them to the source path.

However, it probably is a good idea to build an empty directory tree for the files below and first copy the files there and once completed, copy the whole tree to the actual source folder (like XCOPY OLIB SL_1_16_0_5 /S). The reason is, that these steps are cumbersome and will have to be repeated for each new release (at least if you keep the source for each release in it's own folder). If you do not want to do this, of course you can just copy the files directly into the linden source paths.

rem OLIBS.CMD to build a folder tree for 3rd party libraries and includes
md olibs
md olibs\linden\
md olibs\linden\libraries
md olibs\linden\libraries\include
md olibs\linden\libraries\i686-win32
md olibs\linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib_release
md olibs\linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib_debug
md olibs\linden\libraries\i686-win32\include
md olibs\linden\libraries\i686-win32\include\GL
md olibs\linden\libraries\i686-win32\include\quicktime
md olibs\linden\indra
md olibs\linden\indra\newview

Fmod

• Download & extract fmod 3.75 api for win32, under section heading FMOD 3 Programmers API (later versions, like FMOD Ex, are incompatible).
• Copy "fmodapi375win\api\inc\fmod.h" to "linden\libraries\include"
• Copy "fmodapi375win\api\inc\fmod_errors.h" to "linden\libraries\include"
• Copy "fmodapi375win\api\lib\fmodvc.lib" to "linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib_release" and to "linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib_debug"

(If using cmake, copy "fmodapi375win\api\lib\fmodvc.lib" to "linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib\release" and to "linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib\debug")

• Copy "fmodapi375win\api\fmod.dll" to "linden\indra\newview"

OpenGL

This isn't needed for 1.20 and beyond and possibly for some time before that.

• Download glext.h, glxext.h, and wglext.h
• Copy them to "linden\libraries\i686-win32\include\GL"
• You don't need any additional *.lib or *.dll for OpenGL.

ares (viewer 1.18.4 ... for later releases first check if the ares.h and .lib files are in the Linden library package) - works for vs2k8

• download c-ares 1.4 from here and unpack it somewhere
• open vc.dsw from the c-ares/vc folder
• remove the adig and ahost projects from the vc workspace
• add ares_getnameinfo.c to the areslib project
• for both areslib and acountry, right-click, properties, Code Generation and set Runtime Library to /MT (release) and /MTd (debug)
• compile debug and release
• copy all c-ares\*.h files to linden\libraries\include\ares\*.h
• copy vc\areslib\Debug\*lib to linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib_debug
• copy vc\areslib\Release\*lib to linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib_release

openjpeg (viewer 1.18.4 ... for later releases first check if the openjpeg.lib files are in the Linden library package)

• download the latest OpenJPEG source tar package from here
• open the libopenjpeg.dsw, let it convert and compile it (you'll need the files from the dllopenjpeg sub-project)
• copy debug\openjpeg.lib to linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib_debug
• copy release\openjpeg.lib to linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib_release
• copy release\openjpeg.dll to linden\indra\newview

Quicktime

Currently - as of version 1.21 - CMake requires Quicktime to be installed.

Note: This download requires a registration at the Apple Quicktime website and take a bit of time. You can avoid using QuickTime if you want, see this for details. Remember that your viewer can't play in-world movies if you do so.

• Download & install the Quicktime SDK for Windows
• Copy "QuicktimeSDK\Libraries\QTMLClient.lib" to "linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib_release" and to "linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib_debug".

(If using CMake, copy "QuicktimeSDK\Libraries\QTMLClient.lib" to "linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib\release" and to "linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib\debug" instead)

• Copy the contents of "QuicktimeSDK\CIncludes" into "linden\libraries\i686-win32\include\quicktime".

Configuring for VS2005

CMake

At this point, you should be ready to use CMake. Visit the CMake page, then follow the instructions there. NOTE: CMake is only supported for viewer versions 1.21 and beyond.

Build instructions for 1.20 and earlier

See Compiling older viewers (1.20 and earlier with MSVS) if you'd like to compile a version of the viewer older than 1.20.

Common compile errors

• See common compilation problems if you run into other errors while building.

Running

• You can run the viewer by Debug > Start Debugging or Debug > Start Without Debugging in Visual Studio.
• To run it outside VS, create a shortcut to SecondLife.exe, and change the start location to linden\indra\newview\ (All the .dll will be found there.)
• Alternately copy the exe (possibly rename it) to your "c:\program files\secondlife" folder.

Debugging Info/Configurations

• Usually you will either use ReleaseNoOpt or the ReleaseForDownload configuration.
• ReleaseNoOpt (not optimized) compiles faster and has more debugging information, but this comes at a runtime penalty of about 50% of your FPS in busy areas, compared to ReleaseForDownload build.
• ReleaseForDownload also has debugging information and runs fine in the debugger (although at times you may miss access to some local variables).
• ReleaseNoOpt comes with a seperate debugging console window opens and stays open for the duration of your session, but you can access the same information also by pressing Shift+Ctrl+4 in the viewer (all builds).
• The debug console log can also be redirected to a file if you add "2>secondlife.log" to the command line (Newview, Properties, Debugging, Command line arguments).
• If you want to build a Debug configuration, see the specific section with compile instructions on finding leaks

Problems Running?

• Inventory errors: If you're getting errors while trying to load your inventory, try clearing your cache and deleting other temporary files.
• Missing smime3 DLL: Those are parts of the integrated web browser. Copy 'smime3.dll', 'nss3.dll', 'softokn3.dll', and 'ssl3.dll' files from your official client's main folder to "linden\indra\newview".
• Can't connect: In the debug builds there is a selection box on the login screen to select the server to connect to. Agni is the production grid, aditi is the beta grid. (There seems to be a bug in this part of the code, you may have to make your selection, close the viewer and repoen it, before you can connect to the selected grid).

Submit Patches

This is probably faaar down the road, but if you make changes to the source and want to submit them, see the page about submitting patches.