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Building VirtualBow on Windows (MSYS2 / MinGW-w64)

This document covers a developer build of the VirtualBow GUI on Windows using MSYS2's mingw64 toolchain plus CMake + Ninja. For producing a redistributable installer, see build-portable.ps1.

Prerequisites

  1. MSYS2 installed anywhere — https://www.msys2.org/ The build script auto-detects common locations (C:\msys64, D:\msys64, %USERPROFILE%\msys64, %LOCALAPPDATA%\msys64, %ProgramFiles%\msys64). Override with -Msys2Root <path> or $env:MSYS2_ROOT.
  2. Rust (stable, from https://rustup.rs/) on PATH.

That's it. The script installs every other prerequisite (mingw64 GCC, CMake, Ninja, Qt6, nlohmann-json, Catch2, the x86_64-pc-windows-gnu Rust target) automatically.

You do not need Visual Studio, Qt Creator, or any other MinGW distribution. In fact, having a stray C:\MinGW\bin ahead of MSYS2 on PATH will break the build silently — see Troubleshooting below.

Quick start

From the repository root in PowerShell:

.\build-dev.ps1                          # build virtualbow-gui (default)
.\build-dev.ps1 -Target virtualbow-test  # build the unit-test target
.\build-dev.ps1 -Reconfigure             # re-run cmake before building
.\build-dev.ps1 -Clean                   # wipe build/ and start fresh
.\build-dev.ps1 -Msys2Root D:\msys64     # override MSYS2 location
.\build-dev.ps1 -NoInstall               # skip prereq verification

The script:

  1. Auto-detects the MSYS2 install (or honours -Msys2Root / $env:MSYS2_ROOT) and verifies mingw64\bin\gcc.exe is present.
  2. Prepends %SystemRoot%\System32;%SystemRoot%;<msys2>\mingw64\bin;<msys2>\usr\bin to PATH (in that order — see notes).
  3. Installs any missing mingw64 packages via pacman -S --needed.
  4. Adds the x86_64-pc-windows-gnu Rust target if not already installed.
  5. Builds the Rust FFI static library with cargo build --release.
  6. Runs cmake -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..\gui if build/ doesn't already have a configured build.ninja.
  7. Runs ninja <target>.

Output goes to build\application\virtualbow-gui.exe.

Manual build (without the script)

Replace <msys2> with your MSYS2 install root:

$msys2 = "C:\msys64"   # or wherever you installed it
$env:PATH = "$env:SystemRoot\System32;$env:SystemRoot;$msys2\mingw64\bin;$msys2\usr\bin;" + $env:PATH

mkdir build -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
cd build
cmake -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..\gui
ninja virtualbow-gui

Why the PATH ordering matters

The order in build-dev.ps1 is deliberate:

Position Entry Reason
1 %SystemRoot%\System32 Ensures cmd.exe resolves to the real Windows shell, not the MSYS one (which can't run programs in the middle of a pipeline).
2 %SystemRoot% Same.
3 <msys2>\mingw64\bin gcc, g++, ninja, moc, qmake, and all Qt6 + GCC runtime DLLs.
4 <msys2>\usr\bin sh, sed, etc. for any shell escapes in CMake-generated rules.
5+ inherited PATH Anything else.

Putting mingw64\bin after System32 but before whatever the user has in their environment guarantees: (a) the compilers can find their own DLLs, and (b) a competing C:\MinGW\bin (or Strawberry Perl, or Git's bundled gcc, or Chocolatey's) cannot be picked up first.

Project structure (build inputs)

  • gui/CMakeLists.txt — top-level CMake project for the GUI executable. Pulls in the Rust solver via virtualbow_ffi (built as a static library by Cargo).
  • gui/source/ — C++ Qt6 sources.
  • rust/ — Rust workspace; the FFI crate is invoked from CMake.

Troubleshooting

Test run of moc executable failed / silent exit 1 from ninja

Symptom. CMake configure fails on Qt6's find_package with a vague "Test run of moc executable failed", or ninja prints nothing but exits 1.

Cause. A required runtime DLL cannot be loaded by moc.exe, cc1plus.exe, or ninja.exe. Windows aborts the process with STATUS_DLL_NOT_FOUND (0xc0000135) before any output is written.

The most common reason is <msys2>\mingw64\bin not being on PATH. Another is C:\MinGW\bin (an old MinGW.org install) appearing first and shadowing the MSYS2 toolchain.

Fix. Use build-dev.ps1, or set PATH manually as shown above.

'cmd.exe' is not recognized / "Cannot run a document in the middle of a pipeline"

You shadowed Windows' cmd.exe with MSYS2's. Make sure %SystemRoot%\System32 comes before <msys2>\usr\bin on PATH.

QAbstractItemModelTester: No such file or directory

The header is part of the Qt6::Test component. The GUI does not link against Qt6::Test, so this include should not be present in any non-test source. Remove the #include (it's a debug leftover).

Path contains parentheses

Some Qt-generated defines (e.g. QT_TESTCASE_BUILDDIR) embed the build path literally. If your home folder has ( or ) in its name and you link against Qt6::Test, the unquoted ( can break MOC-generated code. The GUI target intentionally does not link Qt6::Test to avoid this; keep it that way.

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