Compiling on Windows using MSVC

Requirements

Compiling and installing the dependencies

It is highly recommended to use vcpkg to manage dependencies, installed at a path without spaces in it for compatibility with the Luanti build configuration.

"C:\Program Filesvcpkg\vcpkg.exe" # bad, may have issues
"C:\vcpkg\vcpkg.exe" # good, no spaces means fewer problems

If spaces are present, you may see errors like:

libtool:   error: 'Files/vcpkg/buildtrees/libiconv/x64-windows-dbg/lib/libcharset.la' is not a directory

After you successfully built vcpkg you can easily install the required libraries:

vcpkg install zlib zstd curl[winssl] openal-soft libvorbis libogg libjpeg-turbo sqlite3 freetype luajit gmp jsoncpp gettext[tools] sdl2 --triplet x64-windows

This command takes about 10-30 minutes to complete, depending on your device.

curl is highly recommended, as it's required to read the serverlist; curl[winssl] is required to use the content store.
openal-soft, libvorbis and libogg are optional, but required to use sound.
luajit is optional, it replaces the integrated Lua interpreter with a faster just-in-time interpreter.
gmp and jsoncpp are optional, otherwise the bundled versions will be compiled
gettext is optional, but required to use translations.

There are other optional libraries, but we don't test if they can build and link correctly.

Use --triplet to specify the target triplet, e.g. x64-windows or x86-windows.

Compile Luanti

There are two ways to compile Luanti: CMake GUI and CLI

a) CMake GUI

Start up the CMake GUI (Win > search "cmake-gui" > open)
Select Browse Source... and select DIR/minetest (this is where you've cloned the repo)
Select Browse Build... and select DIR/minetest/build (this is a new folder that CMake will prompt to create)
Select Configure
Choose the right Visual Studio version and target platform. Currently, Luanti uses Visual Studio 16 2019, but newer VS versions should work as well. The VS version has to match the version of the installed dependencies.
Choose Specify toolchain file for cross-compiling
Click Next
Select the vcpkg toolchain file e.g. D:/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake
Click Finish
Wait until CMake generates the cache file (this may take about 10-30 minutes, depending on your device)
If there are any errors, solve them and hit Configure
Click Generate
Click Open Project
Compile Luanti inside Visual Studio.
- If you get "Unable to start program '...\x64\Debug\ALL_BUILD'. Access is denied", try compiling via the CLI instead.

b) CLI

Run the following script in PowerShell:

cmake . -G"Visual Studio 16 2019" -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=D:/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DENABLE_CURSES=OFF
cmake --build . --config Release

Make sure that the right compiler is selected and the path to the vcpkg toolchain is correct.

Windows Installer using WiX Toolset

Requirements:

In the Visual Studio 2017 Installer select Optional Features -> WiX Toolset.

Build the binaries as described above, but make sure you unselect RUN_IN_PLACE.

Open the generated project file with Visual Studio. Right-click Package and choose Generate. It may take some minutes to generate the installer.

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