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Building Bitcoin Core with Visual Studio

Introduction

Visual Studio 2022 is minimum required to build Bitcoin Core.

Solution and project files to build with msbuild or Visual Studio can be found in the build_msvc directory.

To build Bitcoin Core from the command-line, it is sufficient to only install the Visual Studio Build Tools component.

The "Desktop development with C++" workload must be installed as well.

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

Prerequisites

To build dependencies (except for Qt), the default approach is to use the vcpkg package manager from Microsoft:

  1. Install vcpkg.

  2. By default, vcpkg makes both release and debug builds for each package. To save build time and disk space, one could skip debug builds (example uses PowerShell):

Add-Content -Path "vcpkg\triplets\x64-windows-static.cmake" -Value "set(VCPKG_BUILD_TYPE release)"

Qt

To build Bitcoin Core with the GUI, a static build of Qt is required.

  1. Download a single ZIP archive of Qt source code from https://download.qt.io/official_releases/qt/ (e.g., qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.15.10.zip), and expand it into a dedicated folder. The following instructions assume that this folder is C:\dev\qt-source.

  2. Open "x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022", and input the following commands:

cd C:\dev\qt-source
mkdir build
cd build
..\configure -release -silent -opensource -confirm-license -opengl desktop -static -static-runtime -mp -qt-zlib -qt-pcre -qt-libpng -nomake examples -nomake tests -nomake tools -no-angle -no-dbus -no-gif -no-gtk -no-ico -no-icu -no-libjpeg -no-libudev -no-sql-sqlite -no-sql-odbc -no-sqlite -no-vulkan -skip qt3d -skip qtactiveqt -skip qtandroidextras -skip qtcharts -skip qtconnectivity -skip qtdatavis3d -skip qtdeclarative -skip doc -skip qtdoc -skip qtgamepad -skip qtgraphicaleffects -skip qtimageformats -skip qtlocation -skip qtlottie -skip qtmacextras -skip qtmultimedia -skip qtnetworkauth -skip qtpurchasing -skip qtquick3d -skip qtquickcontrols -skip qtquickcontrols2 -skip qtquicktimeline -skip qtremoteobjects -skip qtscript -skip qtscxml -skip qtsensors -skip qtserialbus -skip qtserialport -skip qtspeech -skip qtsvg -skip qtvirtualkeyboard -skip qtwayland -skip qtwebchannel -skip qtwebengine -skip qtwebglplugin -skip qtwebsockets -skip qtwebview -skip qtx11extras -skip qtxmlpatterns -no-openssl -no-feature-bearermanagement -no-feature-printdialog -no-feature-printer -no-feature-printpreviewdialog -no-feature-printpreviewwidget -no-feature-sql -no-feature-sqlmodel -no-feature-textbrowser -no-feature-textmarkdownwriter -no-feature-textodfwriter -no-feature-xml -prefix C:\Qt_static
nmake
nmake install

One could speed up building with jom, a replacement for nmake which makes use of all CPU cores.

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

Building

  1. Use Python to generate *.vcxproj for the Visual Studio 2022 toolchain from Makefile:
python build_msvc\msvc-autogen.py

  1. 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. To specify a non-default path to a static Qt package directory, use the QTBASEDIR environment variable.

  2. To build from the command-line with the Visual Studio toolchain use:

msbuild build_msvc\bitcoin.sln -property:Configuration=Release -maxCpuCount -verbosity:minimal

Alternatively, open the build_msvc/bitcoin.sln file in Visual Studio.

Security

Base address randomization is used to make Bitcoin Core more secure. When building Bitcoin using the build_msvc process base address randomization can be disabled by editing common.init.vcproj to change RandomizedBaseAddress from true to false and then rebuilding the project.

To check if bitcoind has RandomizedBaseAddress enabled or disabled run

.\dumpbin.exe /headers src/bitcoind.exe

If is it enabled then in the output Dynamic base will be listed in the DLL characteristics under OPTIONAL HEADER VALUES as shown below

            8160 DLL characteristics
                   High Entropy Virtual Addresses
                   Dynamic base
                   NX compatible
                   Terminal Server Aware

This may not disable all stack randomization as versions of windows employ additional stack randomization protections. These protections must be turned off in the OS configuration.