Windows builds can be made in more than one way and with more than one tool. This guide focuses on the simplest building process using Microsoft Visual Studio 2022
- Git or git GUI, for example, SourceTree [download link](http://www.sourcetreeapp.com/download)
- CMake [download link](https://cmake.org/download/). During install after accepting license agreement make sure to check "Add CMake to the system PATH for all users".
For the list of the packages used you can also consult [vcmi-deps-windows readme](https://github.com/vcmi/vcmi-deps-windows) in case this article gets outdated a bit.
- Select `Manage Configurations...` in the combobox
- Specify the following CMake variable: `ENABLE_CCACHE=ON`
- See the [Visual Studio documentation](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/customize-cmake-settings?view=msvc-170#cmake-variables-and-cache) for details
**NOTE:** This will link Qt5 statically to `VCMI_launcher.exe` and `VCMI_Mapeditor.exe`. See [PR #3421](https://github.com/vcmi/vcmi/pull/3421) for some background.
# Create VCMI installer (This step is not required for just building & development)
Make sure NSIS is installed to default directory or have registry entry so CMake can find it.
After you build VCMI execute following commands from `%VCMI_DIR%/build`.
- for release build: `cpack`
- for debug build: `cpack -C Debug`
# Troubleshooting and workarounds
Vcpkg might be very unstable due to limited popularity and fact of using bleeding edge packages (such as most recent Boost). Using latest version of dependencies could also expose both problems in VCMI code or library interface changes that developers not checked yet. So if you're built Vcpkg yourself and can't get it working please try to use binary package.
Pre-built version we provide is always manually tested with all supported versions of MSVC for both Release and Debug builds and all known quirks are listed below.
#$# Build is successful but can not start new game
Make sure you have:
* Installed Heroes III from disk or using GOG installer
* Copied `Data`, `Maps` and `Mp3` folders from Heroes III to: `%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\vcmi\`
### VCMI won't run since some library is missing
**If you open solution using vcmi.sln** Try to build INSTALL target and see if its output works as expected. Copy missing libraries or even all libraries from there to your build directory. Or run cpack and use produced installer and see if you can get libs from there. cpack -V will give more info. If cpack complains that it can not find dumpbin try Visual Studio Command Prompt (special version of cmd provided with Visual Studio with additional PATH) or modify PATH to have this tool available. Another alternative if you use prebuilt vcpkg package is to download latest msvc build, install it and copy missing/all libraries from there.
Debug builds with MSVC are generally extremely slow since it's not just VCMI binaries are built as debug, but every single dependency too and this usually means no optimizations at all. Debug information that available for release builds is often sufficient so just avoid full debug builds unless absolutely necessary. Instead use RelWithDebInfo configuration, optionally with Optimization Disabled (/Od) to avoid variables being optimized away Also Debug configuration might have some compilation issues because it is not checked via CI for now.
VCPKG generated projects quite often have both debug and regular libs available to linker so it can select wrong lib. For stable RelWithDebInfo build you may try to remove debug folder from VCPKG/installed/x64-windows. Same is done on CI. Also it reduces package size at least twice.
