Windows (XP and later) Compilation / Development Guide¶
Environment configuration¶
To compile RetroArch targeting Windows XP or later, we will use Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.
This guide assumes the host OS is Windows XP.
Prerequisites:
Windows XP Service Pack 3 (requires SP1 or SP2 installed first)
Visual Studio 2010 Express (or Pro)
Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 (needed for the multi-language support in RetroArch)
RetroArch Compilation¶
Building RetroArch¶
The first step is to obtain RetroArch's source tree.
If you need a git shell to work in, msysgit 1.8.5.2 is known to work.
You can clone the repository directly from GitHub:
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For subsequent builds you will need to pull the changes from the repo
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To compile RetroArch, first open the solution file located at pkg/msvc/RetroArch-msvc2010.sln with Visual Studio 2010.
Next we select the desired solution configuration:
The choices are:
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For development purposes you can use the Debug configurations, otherwise use Release. The "Cg" versions also include support for Cg shaders used with the OpenGL video driver. These will require a separate installation of the Nvidia Cg Toolkit.
Now press F7 to build the solution, or go to Build -> Build Solution.
After the build is finished you should be able to find RetroArch-msvc2005.exe in the pkg/msvc/<configuration> directory, where <configuration>
is the one you chose earlier such as Debug or Release. To start the newly compiled retroarch you can press F5 in Visual C++ or simply navigate to the .exe file and run it there.