build-instructions-windows.md

Build instructions (Windows)

Prerequisites

• Windows 7 or later
• Visual Studio 2010 Express or higher
• Python 2.7
• node.js
• git

The instructions bellow are executed under cygwin, but it's not a requirement, you can also build atom-shell under Windows's console or other terminals.

The building of atom-shell is done entirely with command line scripts, so you can use any editor you like to develop atom-shell, but it also means you can not use Visual Studio for the development. Support of building with Visual Studio will come in future.

Note: Even though Visual Studio is not used for building, it's still **required because we need the build toolchains it provided.

Getting the code

$ git clone https://github.com/atom/atom-shell.git

Bootstrapping

The bootstrap script will download all necessary build dependencies and create build project files. Notice that we're using ninja to build atom-shell so there is no Visual Studio project generated.

$ cd atom-shell
$ python script/bootstrap.py

Building

Build both Release and Debug targets:

$ python script/build.py

You can also only build the Debug target:

$ python script/build.py -c Debug

After building is done, you can find atom.exe under out\Debug.

Tests

$ python script/test.py