Difference between revisions of "Compiling the Viewer (MSVS2008)"
Alissa Sabre (talk | contribs) (Added to Category:Compiling viewer.) |
Rob Linden (talk | contribs) m (Compiling the Viewer MSVS Unsupported moved to Compiling the Viewer (MSVS2008): Trying to limit the number of pages, and this looks very MSVS 2008 centric) |
(No difference)
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Revision as of 16:32, 28 October 2008
In current release branches, only MSVS 2003 is officially supported, however other versions of Visual Studio may work. If you run into problems, members of the SLDev mailing list will generally help. It's good form to update the wiki with what you learn, or file JIRAs against source deficiencies. If this is your first build, consider referring back to the list of supported Visual studio editions.
Download Express (optional)
If you do not already own Visual Studio, then you may download Microsoft's free IDE and compiler editions.
Click here to download Visual C++ Express - currently VS2008 only
Install Microsoft Platform & DirectX SDKs
Download and install:
If you have previously installed an older version of the DirectX 9.0 SDK, remove it first (from Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs) before installing this version. Installing the new SDK "on top" of an older version may cause problems. Upon installing DirectX, it is sufficient to install the include and libraries part. Other DX development tools are not necessary.
NOTE: Default installation of both Platform SDK and DirectX SDK can be found in
- C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2 and
- C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK (December 2006), respectively.
Setup the project globals
- Start Visual Studio
- Go to Tools > Options > Projects > VC++ Directories
- Make sure that the includes and libraries paths ("Include files" and "Library files" in the "show directories for" dropdown) exist, and add them if they don't, in the following order: (see screenshots below)
- Platform SDK paths
- DirectX SDK paths
- Visual C++ paths
- NOTE: The newest DirectX SDK ("December 2006") lib folder has two sub-folders, x64 and x86. Make sure your path goes to one of them (select lib/x86, not just lib), or you will get a Link error. For the Windows Platform SDK, there is not a subfolder for x86 (even though there are subfolders for AMD64, IA64, etc.), so do not select a subfolder for the Windows Platform SDK.
- Also, make sure that your cygwin (default C:\cygwin\bin) and ActivePython (default C:\Python25) directories are under the "Executable files" dirs and moved to the bottom of the list. (Even if you update your PATH environment variable, those changes will NOT be reflected inside Visual Studio!)
Compiling the Second Life viewer
Refer to these topics on how to compile the viewer with Microsoft Visual Studio:
- Microsoft Windows - Visual Studio .NET 2003 (recommended, Linden Lab uses VS2003)
- Microsoft Windows - Visual Studio 2005 & Visual C++ 2005 Express
Following alternative methods are also available for experienced developers:
- Building with SCons (can build without project files, based on python)
- Building with CMake (generates project files to build -- experimental)
Screenshots
- Example screenshot of Tools > Options > Projects > VC++ Directories > Includes files
- Example screenshot of Tools > Options > Projects > VC++ Directories > Libraries files
