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Windows 10/11

Enable long path support (if you haven't already)

Find instructions here: Maximum File Path Limitation

Install git

Get it here: Git Download

Install MS Visual Studio 2022

Get it here: Microsoft Visual Studio Ensure CMake tools for Windows is included on install. CMake projects in Visual Studio The "CMake tools" component bundles cmake and ninja (xSTUDIO's CMake generator) along with the MSVC compiler, so no separate install is needed. Restart your machine after Visual Studio finishes installing.

Download and install Qt 6.5.3 SDK

Follow these instructions

Download and install the NSIS tool

NSIS is a packaging system that lets us build xSTUDIO into a Windows installer exe file. Follow the download link on the NSIS homepage. This will download an installer .exe file. Run this program and follow through the steps in the installer wizard with the default installation options until you hit 'Finish'. You can close the NSIS window, it doesn't need to be running for the next steps.

Download the VCPKG repo

Start a Windows Powershell to continue these instructions, where you must run a handfull of powershell commands to build xSTUDIO. Windows Powershell is pre-installed, to start it type Powershell into the Search bar in the Start menu. You will need a location to build xSTUDIO from. We recommend making a folder in your home space, called something like 'dev', as follows:

mkdir dev
cd dev

To build xSTUDIO we need a number of other open source software packages. We use the VCPKG package manager to do this. All that we need to do is download the repo and run the bootstrap script before we build xstudio. Run these commands in the Powershell:

git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg.git
git -C vcpkg checkout c2aeddd80357b17592e59ad965d2adf65a19b22f
./vcpkg/bootstrap-vcpkg.bat

Download the xSTUDIO repo

Download from github in the usual manner. Enter the root folder of the repo and ensure you are building from the correct branch. Example terminal commands might be as follows, to build from the develop branch:

git clone https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/xstudio.git
cd xstudio
git checkout develop

Tell CMake where Qt is installed

CMake needs to know where your Qt 6.5.3 SDK is installed. Create a CMakeUserPresets.json file alongside CMakePresets.json in the repo root. This file is gitignored, so your local path won't be committed. The user preset should have a different name from the tracked preset it inherits from, and add Qt6_DIR to cacheVariables. For example, if user Mary Jane downloaded Qt into the root of her C: drive:

{
  "version": 3,
  "configurePresets": [
    {
      "name": "WinNinjaReleaseLocal",
      "inherits": "WinNinjaRelease",
      "cacheVariables": {
        "Qt6_DIR": "C:/Qt/6.5.3/msvc2019_64/lib/cmake/Qt6"
      }
    }
  ]
}

See the CMake presets documentation for the full format reference.

Set up the build environment

The cmake and ninja tools, along with the MSVC compiler, are bundled with Visual Studio 2022's "CMake tools" component but are not on your PATH by default. Make them available in your PowerShell session by entering the Visual Studio Developer Shell:

Import-Module "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\Common7\Tools\Microsoft.VisualStudio.DevShell.dll"
Enter-VsDevShell -VsInstallPath "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community" -Arch amd64 -SkipAutomaticLocation

After running those two commands, cmake and ninja will resolve directly from the command line for the rest of the session, and the build commands below work as shown.

Build xSTUDIO

Note that the first cmake command below may take several hours to complete. This is because xSTUDIO's dependencies (particularly ffmpeg) take a long time to download and build from the source code, which is what VCPKG is doing.

Configure:

cmake -B build --preset WinNinjaReleaseLocal

Build:

cmake --build build --target package

Note: --target package produces the NSIS installer and is significantly slower than a plain build. When iterating during development, drop the --target package flag and just run cmake --build build.

RelWithDebInfo and Debug variants are also available — see CMakePresets.json for the full list.

If the build is successful, you should have an executable in the 'build' folder called something like 'xSTUDIO-1.2.0-win64.exe'. This can be executed to start the xSTUDIO installer.

Running xSTUDIO from the build tree (dev workflow)

For a quick dev run without going through the installer, the build generates a launcher at build/run_xstudio.bat. Arguments are forwarded to xstudio:

.\build\run_xstudio.bat path\to\session.xst