Compiling for Windows

Requirements

For compiling under Windows, the following is required:

  • Visual Studio Community, version 2017 or later. VS 2019 is recommended. Make sure to read “Installing Visual Studio caveats” below or you will have to run/download the installer again.

  • MinGW-w64 with GCC can be used as an alternative to Visual Studio. Be sure to install/configure it to use the posix thread model.

  • Python 3.5+.

  • SCons 3.0 build system. If using Visual Studio 2019, you need at least SCons 3.1.1.

Note

If you have Scoop installed, you can easily install MinGW and other dependencies using the following command:

  1. scoop install gcc python scons make

Note

If you have MSYS2 installed, you can easily install MinGW and other dependencies using the following command:

  1. pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-python3-pip mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc \
  2.     mingw-w64-i686-python3-pip mingw-w64-i686-gcc make

For each MSYS2 MinGW subsystem, you should then run pip3 install scons in its shell.

See also

For a general overview of SCons usage for Godot, see Introduction to the buildsystem.

Setting up Python

First you need to install Python 3.5 or newer. Make sure to enable the option to add Python to the PATH in the Python installer. The SCons installer should then detect and use the existing Python installation.

Setting up SCons

To install SCons, open the command prompt and run the following command:

  1. python -m pip install scons

If you are prompted with the message Defaulting to user installation because normal site-packages is not writeable, you may have to run that command again using elevated permissions. Open a new command prompt as an Administrator then run the command again to ensure that SCons is available from the PATH.

To check whether you have installed Python and SCons correctly, you can type python --version and scons --version into a command prompt (cmd.exe).

If the commands above don’t work, make sure to add Python to your PATH environment variable after installing it, then check again. You can do so by running the Python installer again and enabling the option to add Python to the PATH.

Installing Visual Studio caveats

If installing Visual Studio 2017 or 2019, make sure to enable C++ in the list of workflows to install.

If installing Visual Studio 2015, make sure to run a Custom installation instead of Typical and select C++ as a language there.

If you’ve already made the mistake of installing Visual Studio without C++ support, run the installer again; it should present you a Modify button. Running the installer from Add/Remove Programs will only give you a Repair option, which won’t let you install C++ tools.

Downloading Godot’s source

Godot’s source code is hosted on GitHub. Downloading it (cloning) using Git is recommended.

The tutorial will assume from now on that you placed the source code in C:\godot.

Warning

To prevent slowdowns caused by continuous virus scanning during compilation, add the Godot source folder to the list of exceptions in your antivirus software.

For Windows Defender, hit the Windows key, type “Windows Defender Settings” then hit Enter. Under Virus & threat protection, go to Virus & threat protection setting and scroll down to Exclusions. Click Add or remove exclusions then add the Godot source folder.

Compiling

Selecting a compiler

SCons will automatically find and use an existing Visual Studio installation. If you do not have Visual Studio installed, it will attempt to use MinGW instead. If you already have Visual Studio installed and want to use MinGW, pass use_mingw=yes to the SCons command line. Note that MSVC builds cannot be performed from the MSYS2 or MinGW shells. Use either cmd.exe or PowerShell instead.

During development, using the Visual Studio compiler is usually a better idea, as it links the Godot binary much faster than MinGW. However, MinGW can produce more optimized binaries using link-time optimization (see below), making it a better choice for production use.

Running SCons

After opening a command prompt, change to the root directory of the engine source code (using cd) and type:

  1. C:\godot> scons platform=windows

You can specify a number of CPU threads to use to speed up the build:

  1. C:\godot> scons -j6 platform=windows

In general, it is OK to have at least as many threads compiling Godot as you have cores in your CPU, if not one or two more. Feel free to add the -j option to any SCons command you see below.

Note

When compiling with multiple CPU threads, SCons may warn about pywin32 being missing. You can safely ignore this warning.

If all goes well, the resulting binary executable will be placed in C:\godot\bin\ with the name godot.windows.tools.32.exe or godot.windows.tools.64.exe. By default, SCons will build a binary matching your CPU architecture, but this can be overridden using bits=64 or bits=32.

This executable file contains the whole engine and runs without any dependencies. Running it will bring up the Project Manager.

Note

If you are compiling Godot for production use, then you can make the final executable smaller and faster by adding the SCons option target=release_debug.

If you are compiling Godot with MinGW, you can make the binary even smaller and faster by adding the SCons option use_lto=yes. As link-time optimization is a memory-intensive process, this will require about 7 GB of available RAM while compiling.

Note

If you want to use separate editor settings for your own Godot builds and official releases, you can enable Self-contained mode by creating a file called ._sc_ or _sc_ in the bin/ folder.

Development in Visual Studio or other IDEs

For most projects, using only scripting is enough but when development in C++ is needed, for creating modules or extending the engine, working with an IDE is usually desirable.

You can create a Visual Studio solution via SCons by running SCons with the vsproj=yes parameter, like this:

  1. scons p=windows vsproj=yes

You will be able to open Godot’s source in a Visual Studio solution now, and able to build Godot using Visual Studio’s Build button.

If you need to edit the build commands, they are located in “Godot” project settings, NMAKE sheet. SCons is called at the end of the commands. If you make a mistake, copy the command from one of the other build configurations (debug, release_debug, release) or architectures (Win32/x64); they are equivalent.

Cross-compiling for Windows from other operating systems

If you are a Linux or macOS user, you need to install MinGW-w64, which typically comes in 32-bit and 64-bit variants. The package names may differ based on your distribution, here are some known ones:

Arch Linux

Install mingw-w64-gcc from the AUR.

Debian / Ubuntu

  1. apt install mingw-w64

Fedora

  1. dnf install mingw64-gcc-c++ mingw64-winpthreads-static \
  2.             mingw32-gcc-c++ mingw32-winpthreads-static

macOS

  1. brew install mingw-w64

Mageia

  1. urpmi mingw64-gcc-c++ mingw64-winpthreads-static \
  2.       mingw32-gcc-c++ mingw32-winpthreads-static

Before attempting the compilation, SCons will check for the following binaries in your PATH environment variable:

  1. i686-w64-mingw32-gcc
  2. x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc

If the binaries are not located in the PATH (e.g. /usr/bin), you can define the following environment variables to give a hint to the build system:

  1. export MINGW32_PREFIX="/path/to/i686-w64-mingw32-"
  2. export MINGW64_PREFIX="/path/to/x86_64-w64-mingw32-"

To make sure you are doing things correctly, executing the following in the shell should result in a working compiler (the version output may differ based on your system):

  1. ${MINGW32_PREFIX}gcc --version
  2. # i686-w64-mingw32-gcc (GCC) 6.1.0 20160427 (Mageia MinGW 6.1.0-1.mga6)

Troubleshooting

Cross-compiling from some Ubuntu versions may lead to this bug, due to a default configuration lacking support for POSIX threading.

You can change that configuration following those instructions, for 64-bit:

  1. sudo update-alternatives --config x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc
  2. <choose x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc-posix from the list>
  3. sudo update-alternatives --config x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++
  4. <choose x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++-posix from the list>

And for 32-bit:

  1. sudo update-alternatives --config i686-w64-mingw32-gcc
  2. <choose i686-w64-mingw32-gcc-posix from the list>
  3. sudo update-alternatives --config i686-w64-mingw32-g++
  4. <choose i686-w64-mingw32-g++-posix from the list>

Creating Windows export templates

Windows export templates are created by compiling Godot without the editor, with the following flags:

  1. C:\godot> scons platform=windows tools=no target=release_debug bits=32
  2. C:\godot> scons platform=windows tools=no target=release bits=32
  3. C:\godot> scons platform=windows tools=no target=release_debug bits=64
  4. C:\godot> scons platform=windows tools=no target=release bits=64

If you plan on replacing the standard export templates, copy these to the following location, replacing <version> with the version identifier (such as 3.1.1.stable or 3.2.dev):

  1. %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Godot\templates\<version>\

With the following names:

  1. windows_32_debug.exe
  2. windows_32_release.exe
  3. windows_64_debug.exe
  4. windows_64_release.exe

However, if you are using custom modules or custom engine code, you may instead want to configure your binaries as custom export templates here:

../../_images/wintemplates.png

You don’t need to copy them in this case, just reference the resulting files in the bin\ directory of your Godot source folder, so the next time you build, you will automatically have the custom templates referenced.