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Building for Windows

Joshua Vandaële edited this page 2026-07-25 00:02:38 +02:00

Table of Contents

• Prerequisites
• Building

Prerequisites

• Visual Studio 2026
  • You can use any edition of VS (Community Edition is free)
  • Easiest to just choose "Desktop development with C++" workload
  • However, minimum required to get source and build are:
    • Git for Windows (Note: The standalone git installer is more recent and is compatible with VS)
    • C++ core features
    • Latest MSVC C++ build tools (x64/x86 and/or ARM64)
    • Latest Windows SDK
    • C++ CMake tools for Windows
  • Recommended for development / debugging (included in workload)
    • Just-In-Time debugger
    • C++ profiling tools (pulls in graphics debugging features)
    • Test Adapter for Google Test

Building

Once you have the prerequisites installed, you can open Visual Studio or open a Developer Command Prompt for Visual Studio to have the necessary environment set up for working with the source code.

You may then proceed with the clone instructions in the Cloning guide and build instructions in the Building with CMake guide.

Dolphin GitHub Wiki

• Cloning

• Building

  • Using CMake
  • Linux
  • Windows
  • macOS
  • OpenBSD

• Feature explanations

  • FIFO Player Overview
  • Running Unit Tests
  • IOS Overview
  • Post Processing Shaders
  • Sys and User Folders

• Dolphin Infrastructure

  • About Dolphin's CI Bot
  • Buildbot Overview
  • Release Process
  • Auto Update Internals
  • Who Can Access What?

• Reference

  • Zelda Microcode
  • GameCube Action Replay Code Types
  • GameCube Action Replay Code Types (Simple Version)

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