Compiling for Windows

    • , version 2015 (14.0) or later. Make sure to read “Installing Visual Studio caveats” below or you will have to run/download the installer again.
    • Python 3.5+ (recommended) or Python 2.7+.
    • build system.
    • Optional - yasm (for WebM SIMD optimizations)

    Note

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

    See also

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

    Setting up SCons

    First, make sure to enable the option to add Python to the in the Python installer. The SCons installer should then detect and use the existing Python installation.

    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.

    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 . Downloading it (cloning) using Git is recommended.

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

    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.

    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.

    Note

    By default, SCons will build a binary matching your CPU architecture, but this can be overriden 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 .

    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 3 GB of available RAM while compiling.

    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.

    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.

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

    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 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):

    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
    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

    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:

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

    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.