Compiling on Windows using MSVC

Requirements

Visual Studio (VS) 2015 or newer including "Desktop development with C++"
CMake (comes with VS C++)
vcpkg (comes with VS C++)
Git

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

If spaces are present, when trying to compile Luanti, you may see errors like:

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

Setup CMake

Start up the CMake GUI (Win > search "cmake-gui" > open)
Select Browse Source... and select path/to/minetest (where you've cloned the repo)
Select Browse Build... and select path/to/minetest/build (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. C:/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

There are two ways to compile Luanti: via Visual Studio or via CLI.

Compile in Visual Studio

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.

Compile via CLI

While in the path/to/minetest folder, run the following script in PowerShell:

$vs="Visual Studio 17 2022" # or "Visual Studio 16 2019", etc., whatever matches your system
$toolchain_file="C:/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake" # ensure this path is correct
cmake . -G $vs -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=$toolchain_file -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DENABLE_CURSES=OFF
cmake --build . --config Release

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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