Microsoft Windows Builds

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On Windows, there are several options on build (compile) environment of the Second Life.

This page explains how you can compile the viewer on Microsoft Windows. As of 1.21, Lindens are using Visual Studio 2005, but other compilers can be used.

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.

Choosing and Preparing a Compiler

Linden-Supported Compilers

Supported compiler:

• Latest releases (1.21 and later):
  • Visual Studio .NET 2005 Professional
• Older releases (1.20 and earlier)
  • Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional
  • Instructions: Compiling the viewer (MSVS2003).

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

• Setup Microsoft Visual Studio

Community Experimental Compilers

• Visual C++ 2005 Express
• Visual Studio 2008 needs some work:
  • Visual Studio 2008
  • Visual C++ 2008 Express (Caution: Boost support with VS 2008 is problematic as of this writing. Check VWR-9541 before continuing on this path)

Instructions: Compiling the Viewer (MSVS2008).

Cross compiling with gcc on Linux

mingw needs some work:

• i686-mingw

Old contributed build instructions are on: User:Dzonatas Sol/Cross compiling the viewer (i686-mingw32).

Getting other Development Tools

You will need to install the following tools to compile the viewer:

• CMake (download CMake)
  • As of this writing, the latest version is 2.6.2. Note: There are many known issues with CMake 2.6.0 and 2.6.1 in conjunction with building the Second Life viewer. CMake 2.4.8 is supported for compiling the 1.21 version of the Second Life viewer, but 2.6.2 is likely to become the new minimum requirement in the near future.
• Cygwin (download 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.
• Python (download either Python.org Standard Python or ActivePython
  • If you are using a version of Python newer than v2.5, you may need to change the Python.cmake file. See discussion for details (this change was necessary as of 1.21-r99587 source branch). )
• The Windows Platform SDK
  • Get the latest version (as of 29 Oct 2008) here: Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5
• DirectX 9.0 SDK
  • Get the latest version (as of 29 Oct 2008) here: DirectX 9.0 SDK (August 2008)

Verify that Cygwin, CMake, and Python are in the windows "PATH".

NOTE: DO NOT use the Cygwin version of CMake or Python. The Build will fail. (CMake specifically excludes the Cygwin version of Python, in the 'Python.cmake' file)

Downloading Source Code

You can download the Viewer source code 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.

Proprietary Libraries

Linden does not include 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"

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".

Next steps

CMake

At this point, you should be ready to use CMake. See Building the viewer with CMake and 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.