Build Instructions

Compiling manually

Prerequisites

• A recent-ish operating system release
  • Windows 10 (1809 or later. Older versions may be supported, but aren’t tested)
  • macOS >= 12
  • Ubuntu >= 22.04 (or equivalent)
• A C++ compiler supporting at least C++17.
  • This includes GCC >= 8, Clang >= 5, and MSVC >= 19.15
• Java JDK <= 17
• cmake >= 3.22
• ninja
• extra-cmake-modules
• Qt 6.0 or later, with the following addons/plugins:
  • Qt NetworkAuth
  • Qt Image Formats
  • Qt Svg
• cmark
• gamemode (required at build time, optional at runtime. Only on Linux)
• glxinfo (required at runtime, only on Linux)
• libarchive
• libGL headers (only on Linux)
• libqrencode
• pciutils (required at runtime, only on Linux)
• scdoc (optional at build time, used to generate manpages)
• tomlplusplus
• vulkan-headers
• zlib

Windows (MSVC)

Note

winget is installed by default on newer versions of Windows 11

You should first install winget, a package manager for Windows.

Once winget is available, install the MSVC toolchain with:

winget install --source winget --exact --id Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.BuildTools --override '--add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools;includeRecommended'

Caution

The installation of vcpkg bundled with VS 2026 is currently broken, and is thus not recommended. You can read more about this here.

As a workaround, you can git clone the repository at https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg and set VCPKG_ROOT to its location.

This does not affect VS 2022!

Install JDK 17 with:

winget install --source winget --exact --id EclipseAdoptium.Temurin.17.JDK

We will also be using Git:

winget install --source winget --exact --id Git.Git

Qt can then be installed with aqt:

winget install --source winget --exact --id miurahr.aqtinstall
aqt install-qt windows desktop 6 win64_msvc2022_64 -m qtimageformats qtnetworkauth

Windows (MSYS2)

MSYS2 may be installed with winget, or by following the setup guide here:

winget install --exact --id MSYS2.MSYS2 --source winget

Install JDK 17 with:

winget install --source winget --exact --id EclipseAdoptium.Temurin.17.JDK

We require the CLANG(ARM)64 environment. After starting the environment, you may run the following to install all dependencies:

pacman -Syu pactoys git
pacboy -S \
  toolchain:p \
  cmake:p ninja:p \
  extra-cmake-modules:p \
  qt6-base:p qt6-imageformats:p qt6-networkauth:p qt6-svg:p \
  cmark:p \
  libarchive:p \
  qrencode:p \
  tomlplusplus:p \
  vulkan-headers:p \
  zlib:p

macOS

The XCode toolchain can be installed with:

xcode-select --install

Qt and other dependencies can then be installed with the following Homebrew command:

brew install cmake ninja extra-cmake-modules openjdk@17 vcpkg qt
git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg ~/vcpkg
export VCPKG_ROOT="$HOME/vcpkg"

Linux (Debian)

sudo apt install \
  build-essential \
  cmake ninja-build extra-cmake-modules pkg-config scdoc \
  qt6-base-dev qt6-image-formats-plugins qt6-networkauth-dev qt6-svg-dev \
  cmark gamemode-dev libarchive-dev libcmark-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libqrencode-dev libtomlplusplus-dev libvulkan-dev zlib1g-dev \

To install JDK 17 on Debian:

sudo apt install wget apt-transport-https gpg
wget -qO - https://packages.adoptium.net/artifactory/api/gpg/key/public | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/adoptium.gpg > /dev/null
echo "deb https://packages.adoptium.net/artifactory/deb $(awk -F= '/^VERSION_CODENAME/{print$2}' /etc/os-release) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/adoptium.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install temurin-17-jdk

While on Ubuntu (or derivatives) you can just:

sudo apt install openjdk-17-jdk

Linux (Arch)

sudo pacman -S \
  base-devel \
  cmake ninja extra-cmake-modules pkg-config scdoc \
  qt6-base qt6-imageformats qt6-networkauth qt6-svg \
  cmark gamemode libarchive mesa qrencode tomlplusplus vulkan-headers zlib \
  jdk17-openjdk

Getting the source

We use Git for our version control. The command below will clone the repository, and fetch all submodules that come with it

git clone --recursive https://github.com/PrismLauncher/PrismLauncher.git
cd PrismLauncher

The rest of the documentation assumes you have already cloned the repository.

Building the source

Configuration

Windows (MSVC)

Open “x64 Native Tools PowerShell” in Windows Terminal

cmake --preset windows_msvc -D CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="C:\path\to\Qt"

Windows (MSYS2)

cmake --preset windows_mingw

macOS

cmake --preset macos \
  -D CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/qt"
  -D CMAKE_OSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=12 \

Linux

cmake --preset linux

Compilation

Windows (MSVC)

cmake --build --preset windows_msvc --config Debug

Windows (MSYS2)

cmake --build --preset windows_mingw --config Debug

macOS

cmake --build --preset macos --config Debug

Linux

cmake --build --preset linux --config Debug

Installation

Windows (MSVC)

cmake --install build --config Debug
cmake --install build --config Debug --component portable # If you want to install a portable version

Windows (MSYS2)

cmake --install build --config Debug
cmake --install build --config Debug --component portable # If you want to install a portable version

macOS

cmake --install build --config Debug

Linux

cmake --install build --config Debug
cmake --install build --config Debug --component portable # If you want to install a portable version
DESTDIR="$pkgdir" cmake --install build --config Debug # If you're installing for a package

Building with Nix (Linux and macOS)

Nix is a tool for handling reproducible builds across multiple platforms.

After installing Nix and checking out the repository, you can run the following command to build a debug package:

nix build --print-build-logs '.#prismlauncher-debug'

You can also enter a development shell with all of the tools required to build manually:

nix-shell
cmake --preset linux_debug
cmake --build build
cmake --install build

Building a Flatpak (Linux)

Flatpaks allow for you to quickly build Prism and run it on any distribution

Make sure Flathub is setup.

# Install Flatpak build tools
flatpak install flathub org.flatpak.Builder

# Clone the source repository
git clone --recursive https://github.com/prismlauncher/PrismLauncher

# Enter the Flatpak directory
cd PrismLauncher/flatpak

# Run the build
flatpak run org.flatpak.Builder \
  --user \
  --install \ # Comment if you only want to build, not install
  --install-deps-from=flathub \
  --ccache \
  --repo=repo \
  builddir \
  org.prismlauncher.PrismLauncher.yml