1# Building Zed for Windows
  2
  3> The following commands may be executed in any shell.
  4
  5## Repository
  6
  7Clone down the [Zed repository](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed).
  8
  9## Dependencies
 10
 11- Install [rustup](https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install)
 12
 13- Install [Visual Studio](https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/) with the optional components `MSVC v*** - VS YYYY C++ x64/x86 build tools` and `MSVC v*** - VS YYYY C++ x64/x86 Spectre-mitigated libs (latest)` (`v***` is your VS version and `YYYY` is year when your VS was released. Pay attention to the architecture and change it to yours if needed.)
 14- Install Windows 11 or 10 SDK depending on your system, but ensure that at least `Windows 10 SDK version 2104 (10.0.20348.0)` is installed on your machine. You can download it from the [Windows SDK Archive](https://developer.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/windows-sdk/)
 15- Install [CMake](https://cmake.org/download) (required by [a dependency](https://docs.rs/wasmtime-c-api-impl/latest/wasmtime_c_api/)). Or you can install it through Visual Studio Installer, then manually add the `bin` directory to your `PATH`, for example: `C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\CMake\CMake\bin`.
 16
 17If you can't compile Zed, make sure that you have at least the following components installed:
 18
 19```json
 20{
 21  "version": "1.0",
 22  "components": [
 23    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.CoreEditor",
 24    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.CoreEditor",
 25    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64",
 26    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.ComponentGroup.WebToolsExtensions.CMake",
 27    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CMake.Project",
 28    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows11SDK.26100",
 29    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Runtimes.x86.x64.Spectre"
 30  ],
 31  "extensions": []
 32}
 33```
 34
 35The list can be obtained as follows:
 36
 37- Open the Visual Studio Installer
 38- Click on `More` in the `Installed` tab
 39- Click on `Export configuration`
 40
 41## Backend dependencies
 42
 43> This section is still in development. The instructions are not yet complete.
 44
 45If you are developing collaborative features of Zed, you'll need to install the dependencies of zed's `collab` server:
 46
 47- Install [Postgres](https://www.postgresql.org/download/windows/)
 48- Install [Livekit](https://github.com/livekit/livekit), optionally you can add the `livekit-server` binary to your `PATH`.
 49
 50Alternatively, if you have [Docker](https://www.docker.com/) installed you can bring up all the `collab` dependencies using Docker Compose:
 51
 52```sh
 53docker compose up -d
 54```
 55
 56### Notes
 57
 58You should modify the `pg_hba.conf` file in the `data` directory to use `trust` instead of `scram-sha-256` for the `host` method. Otherwise, the connection will fail with the error `password authentication failed`. The `pg_hba.conf` file typically locates at `C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\17\data\pg_hba.conf`. After the modification, the file should look like this:
 59
 60```conf
 61# IPv4 local connections:
 62host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            trust
 63# IPv6 local connections:
 64host    all             all             ::1/128                 trust
 65```
 66
 67Also, if you are using a non-latin Windows version, you must modify the`lc_messages` parameter in the `postgresql.conf` file in the `data` directory to `English_United States.1252` (or whatever UTF8-compatible encoding you have). Otherwise, the database will panic. The `postgresql.conf` file should look like this:
 68
 69```conf
 70# lc_messages = 'Chinese (Simplified)_China.936' # locale for system error message strings
 71lc_messages = 'English_United States.1252'
 72```
 73
 74After this, you should restart the `postgresql` service. Press the `win` key + `R` to launch the `Run` window. Type the `services.msc` and hit the `OK` button to open the Services Manager. Then, find the `postgresql-x64-XX` service, right-click on it, and select `Restart`.
 75
 76## Building from source
 77
 78Once you have the dependencies installed, you can build Zed using [Cargo](https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/).
 79
 80For a debug build:
 81
 82```sh
 83cargo run
 84```
 85
 86For a release build:
 87
 88```sh
 89cargo run --release
 90```
 91
 92And to run the tests:
 93
 94```sh
 95cargo test --workspace
 96```
 97
 98## Installing from msys2
 99
100[MSYS2](https://msys2.org/) distribution provides Zed as a package [mingw-w64-zed](https://packages.msys2.org/base/mingw-w64-zed). The package is available for UCRT64, MINGW64 and CLANG64 repositories. To download it, run
101
102```sh
103pacman -Syu
104pacman -S $MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX-zed
105```
106
107then you can run `zed` in a shell.
108
109You can see the [build script](https://github.com/msys2/MINGW-packages/blob/master/mingw-w64-zed/PKGBUILD) for more details on build process.
110
111> Please, report any issue in [msys2/MINGW-packages/issues](https://github.com/msys2/MINGW-packages/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+zed) first.
112
113## Troubleshooting
114
115### Setting `RUSTFLAGS` env var breaks builds
116
117If you set the `RUSTFLAGS` env var, it will override the `rustflags` settings in `.cargo/config.toml` which is required to properly build Zed.
118
119Since these settings can vary from time to time, the build errors you receive may vary from linker errors, to other stranger errors.
120
121If you'd like to add extra rust flags, you may do 1 of the following in `.cargo/config.toml`:
122
123Add your flags in the build section
124
125```toml
126[build]
127rustflags = ["-C", "symbol-mangling-version=v0", "--cfg", "tokio_unstable"]
128```
129
130Add your flags in the windows target section
131
132```toml
133[target.'cfg(target_os = "windows")']
134rustflags = [
135    "--cfg",
136    "windows_slim_errors",
137    "-C",
138    "target-feature=+crt-static",
139]
140```
141
142Or, you can create a new `.cargo/config.toml` in the same folder as the Zed repo (see below). This is particularly useful if you are doing CI builds since you don't have to edit the original `.cargo/config.toml`.
143
144```
145upper_dir
146├── .cargo          // <-- Make this folder
147│   └── config.toml // <-- Make this file
148└── zed
149    ├── .cargo
150    │   └── config.toml
151    └── crates
152        ├── assistant
153        └── ...
154```
155
156In the new (above) `.cargo/config.toml`, if we wanted to add `--cfg gles` to our rustflags, it would look like this
157
158```toml
159[target.'cfg(all())']
160rustflags = ["--cfg", "gles"]
161```
162
163### Cargo errors claiming that a dependency is using unstable features
164
165Try `cargo clean` and `cargo build`.
166
167### `STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION`
168
169This error can happen if you are using the "rust-lld.exe" linker. Consider trying a different linker.
170
171If you are using a global config, consider moving the Zed repository to a nested directory and add a `.cargo/config.toml` with a custom linker config in the parent directory.
172
173See this issue for more information [#12041](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/12041)
174
175### Invalid RC path selected
176
177Sometimes, depending on the security rules applied to your laptop, you may get the following error while compiling Zed:
178
179```
180error: failed to run custom build command for `zed(C:\Users\USER\src\zed\crates\zed)`
181
182Caused by:
183  process didn't exit successfully: `C:\Users\USER\src\zed\target\debug\build\zed-b24f1e9300107efc\build-script-build` (exit code: 1)
184  --- stdout
185  cargo:rerun-if-changed=../../.git/logs/HEAD
186  cargo:rustc-env=ZED_COMMIT_SHA=25e2e9c6727ba9b77415588cfa11fd969612adb7
187  cargo:rustc-link-arg=/stack:8388608
188  cargo:rerun-if-changed=resources/windows/app-icon.ico
189  package.metadata.winresource does not exist
190  Selected RC path: 'bin\x64\rc.exe'
191
192  --- stderr
193  The system cannot find the path specified. (os error 3)
194warning: build failed, waiting for other jobs to finish...
195```
196
197In order to fix this issue, you can manually set the `ZED_RC_TOOLKIT_PATH` environment variable to the RC toolkit path. Usually, you can set it to:
198`C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\<SDK_version>\x64`.
199
200See this [issue](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/18393) for more information.
201
202### Build fails: Path too long
203
204You may receive an error like the following when building
205
206```
207error: failed to get `pet` as a dependency of package `languages v0.1.0 (D:\a\zed-windows-builds\zed-windows-builds\crates\languages)`
208
209Caused by:
210  failed to load source for dependency `pet`
211
212Caused by:
213  Unable to update https://github.com/microsoft/python-environment-tools.git?rev=ffcbf3f28c46633abd5448a52b1f396c322e0d6c#ffcbf3f2
214
215Caused by:
216  path too long: 'C:/Users/runneradmin/.cargo/git/checkouts/python-environment-tools-903993894b37a7d2/ffcbf3f/crates/pet-conda/tests/unix/conda_env_without_manager_but_found_in_history/some_other_location/conda_install/conda-meta/python-fastjsonschema-2.16.2-py310hca03da5_0.json'; class=Filesystem (30)
217```
218
219In order to solve this, you can enable longpath support for git and Windows.
220
221For git: `git config --system core.longpaths true`
222
223And for Windows with this PS command:
224
225```powershell
226New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem" -Name "LongPathsEnabled" -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force
227```
228
229For more information on this, please see [win32 docs](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/maximum-file-path-limitation?tabs=powershell)
230
231(note that you will need to restart your system after enabling longpath support)