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For MEGA Desktop App development we are targeting Windows 10, although we are providing packages for other versions as well; please check the main README file for a definitive list.
Downloading the latest stable versions of these tools should generally be OK.
Install the Community Edition via the Visual Studio Installer. If you have a
Professional license, that works too. Along with the core editor package you
will need to install the extra Workload Component for Desktop Development with C++.
For MEGA Desktop development, we have a working headless build system via CMake which we are using the build the installer packages, however, for day-to-day development we are primarily using QMake as a team, due to having good Qt tooling support and a working system for all the supported platforms. That being said, we are using CMake right now to build the 3rdParty dependencies required for both SDK and MEGA Desktop and then switching over to QMake + Qt Creator for developer convenience.
Please download and install using the Windows x64 Installer from: https://cmake.org/download/
It is useful to add CMake to the system path in the installer wizard. (for current user only is fine)
Download Git for Windows based on the MSYS MinGW environment from: https://git-scm.com/downloads
During the installation wizard:
- Select "Checkout as-is, commit as-is" to avoid line ending conversions.
- Add the Git tools to the user environment PATH;
This being the simplest option, the alternative is to use it from git-bash only. Keep in mind that CMake and Visual Studio Compiler tools need to be accessible from inside your shell.
We are using the new Windows Terminal with PowerShell and the vanilla prompt to build from the command-line. Using PowerShell in the recent Windows Terminal with no specific development environment loaded up, works best for our use case. Since you already added CMake and Git to your user environment paths, they are responsible for supplying all of the other tools necessary for building. Most notably, the exact VC++ compiler and builder tool from Visual Studio. For more complex Git operations or using authentication, you likely have to revert to using the Git Bash version of the Git Tools package.
You can install Qt Creator using the Qt Online Installer from: https://www.qt.io/download-qt-installer
You will have to create an account, even if you only install the Community Editions.
We are currently using Qt 5.15.11, for which the Qt Company does not provide pre-built binaries. You can build Qt using:
$ cd contrib\build_qt\windows
$ .\build-qt.cmd
A good installation path is C:\Qt\.
Along with Qt, MEGA Desktop and the MEGA SDK require another dozen or more third party libraries to cover all the functionality exposed to our users. We are using Microsoft's VCPKG C++ Library Manager for managing our dependencies and we employ it automagically from our CMake scripts. You don't have to install it manually.
Open Windows Terminal and clone the Desktop repository:
$ mkdir c:\mega\
$ cd c:\mega\
$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/meganz/MEGAsync.git desktop
The MEGA SDK is fetched recursively from https://github.com/meganz/sdk.git
This step, will check-out all the 3rdParty dependencies via VCPKG and then proceed to build those, the SDK and MEGA Desktop in that order, via CMake.
$ cd c:\mega\desktop\contrib\cmake
$ cmake -DEXTRA_ARGS="-DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=C:\Qt\5.15.11\x64" -DEXTRA_ARGS="-DQT_DIR=C:\Qt\5.15.11\x64" -DTARGET=MEGAsync -DTRIPLET=x64-windows-mega -P build_from_scratch.cmake
To change the target (to x86 for e.g.), choose another triplet name from:
c:\mega\desktop\src\MEGASync\mega\contrib\cmake\vcpkg_extra_triplets\
To change the Visual Studio version used, edit the target triplet file.
For development with an IDE, we recommend Qt Creator, though Visual Studio should work fine with the CMake generated solution file. Opening the CMakeLists in both IDE's should be fine too, though we are not using this approach right For development with an IDE, we recommend Qt Creator, though Visual Studio should work fine with the CMake generated solution file. Opening the CMakeLists in both IDE's should be fine too.
If needed, add the Qt version you built.
Open desktop\src\MEGAsync\MEGAsync.pro in Qt Creator.
Set it up as any other Qt QMake based project, using the Qt 5.15.11 kit you built/installed
and set matching target architecture.
Some recommended options:
- disable
Run in terminal - check
Add build library search path to PATH - in the
Build environmentsection, set the library search path added by the previous option to use the\bindirectory instead of\lib, like so:c:\mega\desktop\src\MEGASync\..\..\..\3rdParty_desktop\vcpkg\installed\x64-windows-mega\debug\bin
This ensures that MEGASync will find the required dynamic libraries at run-time when started from inside the IDE. Change the parent directory to release if you're targeting that.
When building using the QMake project, both the application and the SDK are
being rebuilt since the latter has its own QMake project files in the
sub-project at bindings/qt/sdk.pri. Whereas the 3rdParty libs remain the ones
being already built by CMake.
You might have to generate the initial set of language files so they are found by the build system onwards. To do that, in Qt Creator, in the application menu, go to Tools -> External -> Linguist and click on Release Translations action. You can achieve the same, from the command-line:
$ cd c:\mega\desktop\src
$ c:\Qt\5.15.11\x64\bin\lrelease.exe MEGASync/MEGASync.pro