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Building Bitcoin Core with Visual Studio

Introduction

Solution and project files to build the Bitcoin Core applications msbuild or Visual Studio can be found in the build_msvc directory. The build has been tested with Visual Studio 2017 and 2019.

Building with Visual Studio is an alternative to the Linux based cross-compiler build.

Quick Start

The minimal steps required to build Bitcoin Core with the msbuild toolchain are below. More detailed instructions are contained in the following sections.

vcpkg install --triplet x64-windows-static boost-filesystem boost-multi-index boost-signals2 boost-test boost-thread libevent openssl zeromq berkeleydb rapidcheck double-conversion
py -3 build_msvc\msvc-autogen.py
msbuild /m build_msvc\bitcoin.sln /p:Platform=x64 /p:Configuration=Release /t:build

Dependencies

A number of open source libraries are required in order to be able to build Bitcoin Core.

Options for installing the dependencies in a Visual Studio compatible manner are:

Use Microsoft's vcpkg to download the source packages and build locally. This is the recommended approach.
Download the source code, build each dependency, add the required include paths, link libraries and binary tools to the Visual Studio project files.
Use nuget packages with the understanding that any binary files have been compiled by an untrusted third party.

The external dependencies required for building are:

Berkeley DB
Boost
DoubleConversion
libevent
OpenSSL
Qt5
RapidCheck
ZeroMQ

Qt

In order to build the Bitcoin Core a static build of Qt is required. The runtime library version (e.g. v141, v142) and platform type (x86 or x64) must also match.

A prebuilt version of Qt can be downloaded from here. Please be aware this download is NOT an officially sanctioned Bitcoin Core distribution and is provided for developer convenience. It should NOT be used for builds that will be used in a production environment or with real funds.

To build Bitcoin Core without Qt unload or disable the bitcoin-qt, libbitcoin_qt and test_bitcoin-qt projects.

Building

The instructions below use vcpkg to install the dependencies.

Install vcpkg.
Install the required packages (replace x64 with x86 as required). The list of required packages can be found in the build_msvc\vcpkg-packages.txt file. The PowerShell command below will work if run from the repository root directory and vcpkg is in the path. Alternatively the contents of the packages text file can be pasted in place of the Get-Content cmdlet.

PS >.\vcpkg install --triplet x64-windows-static $(Get-Content -Path build_msvc\vcpkg-packages.txt).split()

Use Python to generate *.vcxproj from Makefile

PS >py -3 msvc-autogen.py

An optional step is to adjust the settings in the build_msvc directory and the common.init.vcxproj file. This project file contains settings that are common to all projects such as the runtime library version and target Windows SDK version. The Qt directories can also be set.
Build with Visual Studio 2017 or msbuild.

msbuild /m bitcoin.sln /p:Platform=x64 /p:Configuration=Release /p:PlatformToolset=v141 /t:build

Build with Visual Studio 2019 or msbuild.

msbuild /m bitcoin.sln /p:Platform=x64 /p:Configuration=Release /t:build

AppVeyor

The .appveyor.yml in the root directory is suitable to perform builds on AppVeyor Continuous Integration servers. The simplest way to perform an AppVeyor build is to fork Bitcoin Core and then configure a new AppVeyor Project pointing to the forked repository.

For safety reasons the Bitcoin Core .appveyor.yml file has the artifact options disabled. The build will be performed but no executable files will be available. To enable artifacts on a forked repository uncomment the lines shown below:

    #- 7z a bitcoin-%APPVEYOR_BUILD_VERSION%.zip %APPVEYOR_BUILD_FOLDER%\build_msvc\%platform%\%configuration%\*.exe
    #- path: bitcoin-%APPVEYOR_BUILD_VERSION%.zip

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