**Note that installing all the development prerequisites and libraries will require about 12 GB of free disk space. Please ensure this space is available on your `C:` drive before proceeding.**
This guide assumes you are on a 64-bit system. You might need to manually search out alternate download links should you desire to build Chatterino on a 32-bit system.
Download and install [Visual Studio 2022 Community](https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/). In the installer, select "Desktop development with C++".
- Installing the latest **stable** Qt version is advised for new installations, but if you want to use your existing installation please ensure you are running **Qt 5.15.2 or later**.
4. Under the "Tools" tree element (at the bottom), ensure that `Qt Creator X.X.X` and `Debugging Tools for Windows` are selected. (they should be checked by default)
5. Continue through the installer and let the installer finish installing Qt.
Note: This installation will take about 2 GB of disk space.
1. Type "path" in the Windows start menu and click `Edit the system environment variables`.
2. Click the `Environment Variables...` button bottom right.
3. In the `User variables` (scoped to the current user) or `System variables` (system-wide) section, scroll down until you find `Path` and double click it.
4. Click the `New` button top right and paste in the file path for your Qt installation (e.g. `C:\Qt\6.5.3\msvc2019_64\bin` by default).
Visual Studio versions map as follows: `14.3` in the filename corresponds to MSVC 2022. _Anything prior to Visual Studio 2022 is unsupported. Please upgrade should you have an older installation._
**Convenience link for Visual Studio 2022: [boost_1_84_0-msvc-14.3-64.exe](https://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost-binaries/1.84.0/boost_1_84_0-msvc-14.3-64.exe/download)**
<summary>Adding conan to your PATH if you installed it with pip</summary>
_Note: This will add all Python-scripts to your `PATH`, conan being one of them._
1. Type "path" in the Windows start menu and click `Edit the system environment variables`.
2. Click the `Environment Variables...` button bottom right.
3. In the `System variables` section, scroll down until you find `Path` and double click it.
4. Click the `New` button top right.
5. Open up a terminal `where.exe conan` to find the file path (the folder that contains the conan.exe) to add.
6. Add conan 2's file path (e.g. `C:\Users\example\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python311\Scripts`) to the blank text box that shows up. This is your current Python installation's scripts folder.
Open up your terminal with the Visual Studio environment variables (e.g. `x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022`), cd to the cloned chatterino2 directory and run the following commands:
To build a debug build, you'll also need to add the `-s compiler.runtime_type=Debug` flag to the `conan install` invocation. See [this StackOverflow post](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59828611/windeployqt-doesnt-deploy-qwindowsd-dll-for-a-debug-application/75607313#75607313)
2. You will be presented with a screen that is titled "Configure Project". In this screen, you should have at least one option present ready to be configured, like this:
Build results will be placed in a folder at the same level as the "chatterino2" project folder (e.g. if your sources are at `C:\Users\example\src\chatterino2`, then the build will be placed in an automatically generated folder under `C:\Users\example\src`, e.g. `C:\Users\example\src\build-chatterino-Desktop_Qt_6.5.3_MSVC2019_64bit-Release`.)
- Note that if you are building Chatterino purely for usage, not for development, it is recommended that you click the "PC" icon above the play icon and select "Release" instead of "Debug".
If you build Chatterino, the result directories will contain a `chatterino.exe` file in the `$OUTPUTDIR\release\` directory. This `.exe` file will not directly run on any given target system, because it will be lacking various Qt runtimes.
To produce a standalone package, you need to generate all required files using the tool `windeployqt`. This tool can be found in the `bin` directory of your Qt installation, e.g. at `C:\Qt\6.5.3\msvc2019_64\bin\windeployqt.exe`.
You can now create a zip archive of all the contents in `releases` and distribute the program as is, without requiring any development tools to be present on the target system. (However, the CRT must be present, as usual - see the [README](README.md)).
Make sure you installed `C++ AddressSanitizer` in your VisualStudio installation like described in the [Microsoft Docs](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/sanitizers/asan#install-the-addresssanitizer).
To build Chatterino with AddressSanitizer on MSVC, you need to add `-DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS=/fsanitize=address` to your CMake options.
When you start Chatterino, and it's complaining about `clang_rt.asan_dbg_dynamic-x86_64.dll` missing,
copy the file found in `<VisualStudio-installation-path>\VC\Tools\MSVC\<version>\bin\Hostx64\x64\clang_rt.asan_dbg_dynamic-x86_64.dll` to the `Chatterino` folder inside your `build` folder.
To learn more about AddressSanitizer and MSVC, visit the [Microsoft Docs](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/sanitizers/asan).
