Building for Windows¶

1. Install dependencies¶

CMake 3.20 or newer, added to PATH
Visual Studio 2022 with Desktop development with C++
GLFW 3.4 development package, or SDL2 if building with -DAPI_BACKEND=sdl
Python 3 for generated editor API suggestion files

2. Clone the repository¶

git clone https://github.com/doriaxengine/doriax.git
cd doriax

3. Configure and build¶

Using the Visual Studio generator:

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G "Visual Studio 17 2022"
cmake --build build --config Release --target doriax-editor

Visual Studio is a multi-config generator, so the resulting doriax-editor executable is placed under a configuration subdirectory such as build/Release/.

The Windows runtime defaults to Direct3D 11 for standalone projects. You can request OpenGL Core instead with -DGRAPHIC_BACKEND=glcore when configuring a runtime build.

Faster builds with Ninja

If you have Ninja installed you can use it instead of the Visual Studio generator:

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G "Ninja"
cmake --build build --config Release --target doriax-editor

With Ninja the executable is created directly under build/.

Building with MinGW (GCC)¶

The default and recommended Windows toolchain is MSVC. You can instead build with a MinGW-w64 GCC toolchain — for example from MSYS2 — with gcc, g++ and ninja on PATH:

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G "Ninja" ^
  -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=gcc -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++
cmake --build build --config Release --target doriax-editor

A MinGW editor only loads MinGW C++ plugins

The editor and your compiled C++ scripts share a single engine instance, so they must use the same C++ ABI. A MinGW-built editor can therefore only build and load MinGW GCC plugins — not MSVC ones — while the official MSVC download is the reverse; the two never mix. Most users should stay on the MSVC build and only choose MinGW if they specifically need a GCC plugin toolchain. See C++ Build Setup → Choosing a compiler.

Runtime project build¶

For an exported or standalone runtime project, configure the engine directory and pass the project root if it is not the default engine/project folder:

cmake -S engine -B build-runtime -DPROJECT_ROOT="C:/path/to/project" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build-runtime --config Release --target doriax-project

Use the generated executable from the selected configuration folder.

Vulkan backend¶

To build a Windows runtime with the Vulkan backend, install the Vulkan SDK and set the VULKAN_SDK environment variable to your SDK path. Pass -DGRAPHIC_BACKEND=vulkan at configure time:

cmake -S engine -B build-vulkan ^
  -DPROJECT_ROOT="C:/path/to/project" ^
  -DGRAPHIC_BACKEND=vulkan ^
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ^
  -G "Ninja"
cmake --build build-vulkan --config Release --target doriax-project

Shaders for exported Vulkan projects are compiled to SPIR-V by the editor's shader builder.