Compiling the viewer (MSVS2003)

The following instructions are for compiling the Second Life viewer on Windows for Visual Studio .Net 2003. If you are using more recent versions of Visual Studio, see Compiling the viewer (MSVS2005). For other platforms including MacOS and Linux, see Compiling the viewer.

If you get lost, or these instructions are incomplete, see communication tools for a list of ways to get in touch with people that can help.

Windows

Development Environment

The following dev environment is what LL uses for Windows development. There is no reason that the Second Life viewer can not be built using other environments, but it will take some extra work.

(Instructions for building the viewer using Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET 2005 Express can be found here. At the time of writing, Express was freely available.)

• Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional
  • Microsoft Platform SDK
  • A DirectX 9.0 SDK released on or after Summer of 2003 DirectX 9.0 SDK (December 2006) DirectX 9.0 SDK Update (Summer 2003)
    • Note: 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.
  • Set up the project globals:
    • Start Visual C++
    • Go to Tools/Options/Projects/VC++ Directories
    • Make sure that the includes and libraries paths have the the Platform SDK paths first, then the DirectX SDK paths, and then the Visual C++ paths.
    • If the DirectX SDK paths aren't present, add them to both includes and libraries.
• ActivePython 2.3x
• ActivePerl
• Cygwin
  • When you run the cygwin setup utility make sure you have selected to install patchutil, flex, and bison (all located under "devel") which are not part of the default install. note: when installing cygwin, be sure to install in the default directory. Otherwise, you will have to modify the "lscript_compile_fb.vproj" file to point to the right locations.

Libraries

If you have downloaded the library directory from LL, extract it, and copy the files to your code directory, maintaining the same directory structure. We have included all the libraries we can ship in this file, but we can not distribute the source to the following , and you will need to follow the instructions to acquire below:

Fmod

gl

Quicktime

Fmod

• Download & extract fmod 3.75 api for win32.
• Copy "fmodapi375win\api\inc\fmod.h" to "libraries\include"
• Copy "fmodapi375win\api\inc\fmod_errors.h" to "libraries\include"
• Copy "fmodapi375win\api\lib\fmodvc.lib" to "libraries\i686-win32\lib_release"
• Copy "fmodapi375win\api\lib\fmodvc.lib" to "libraries\i686-win32\lib_debug"
• Copy "fmodapi375win\api\fmod.dll" to "indra\newview"

gl

• Download glext.h, glxext.h, and wglext.h
• Copy them to "libraries\i686-win32\include\GL"

Quicktime

• Download & install the Quicktime SDK for Windows
• Copy "QuicktimeSDK\Libraries\QTMLClient.lib" to "\libraries\i686-win32\lib_release".
• Copy "QuicktimeSDK\Libraries\QTMLClient.lib" to "\libraries\i686-win32\lib_debug".
• Copy the contents of "QuicktimeSDK\CIncludes" into "\libraries\i686-win32\include\quicktime".

Compiling Libraries from source

If you are interested in compiling the libraries from source instead of using the zipfile of precompiled libraries provided by Linden Lab, see Compiling the viewer libraries (MSVS 2003)

Building

• Open the \indra\indra_complete\indra_complete.sln solution in Visual Studio.
• Set newview to be the startup project.
• Build either ReleaseNoOpt (for debugging) or ReleaseForDownload (for production).
• ReleaseNoOpt offers a more debugging information. A seperate debugging console window opens and stays open for the duration of your session.
• This comes at a penalty of about 50% of your FPS in busy areas, compared to ReleaseForDownload build.
• newview_noopt.exe will be built in \indra\newview\ReleaseNoOpt, or
• SecondLife.exe will be built in \indra\newview\ReleaseForDownload
• create a shortcut to newview_noopt.exe or secondlife.exe, and change the start location to \indra\newview\ (all the .dll will be found there.)