dvmhost/docs/WINDOWS_BUILD.md

Windows build prerequisites and steps for dvmhost

Prerequisites

• Visual Studio 2019/2022 (Desktop development with C++ workload) or at least the MSVC build tools.
• CMake 3.16 or newer
• Ninja (recommended generator)
• Git
• (Optional) OpenSSL for Windows if you need SSL; not required by default when building with -DCOMPILE_WIN32=ON.

Quick steps

1. Open a Developer command prompt (e.g. "x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022") or run the MSVC environment so compilers are on PATH.
2. Ensure cmake and ninja are on PATH.
3. From the repository root:

# create an out/build directory and configure
mkdir -p out\build\windows
cmake -S . -B out\build\windows -G Ninja -DCOMPILE_WIN32=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo

# build
cmake --build out\build\windows --config RelWithDebInfo

Notes

• The project provides CMakeSettings.json presets for Visual Studio Code/CMake Tools which enable COMPILE_WIN32 and use Ninja.
• TUI support is disabled on Windows by design; some utilities that require ncurses will not be available when COMPILE_WIN32=ON.
• If you prefer Visual Studio IDE: open the CMake project in Visual Studio, select the provided configuration (see CMakeSettings.json) and build.
• If you need OpenSSL for Windows, install a binary distribution and set -DOPENSSL_ROOT_DIR="C:/path/to/openssl" when invoking cmake.

If you want, run .uild-windows.ps1 from a Developer PowerShell prompt — it will run the configure+build steps automatically.