Current release for Windows: WINDOWS Binaries

Current release for MacOS: MacOS Binaries

Current release for Linux: Linux Binaries

You don't need the sources, unless you wish to compile GBDK-2020 yourself. Download the current release binaries using the links above.

Online documentation

gbdk-2020

GBDK A C compiler, assembler, linker and set of libraries for the Z80 like Nintendo Gameboy.

Current status

• updated CRT and library that suits better for game development
• the latest nightlies of sdcc (the compiler and toolchain) are used from sourceforge. At the moment of writing this the last stable version is 4.0 which has linker issues and won't work if you want to use banks. Please use one of the nightlies available here (we used 4.0.4 #11952)
• The compiler driver lcc supports the latest sdcc toolchain.

For full list of changes see the ChangeLog file

Origin

Over the years people have been complaining about all the issues caused by a very old version of SDCC (the compiler). This is a proper attempt of updating it while also keeping all the old functionallity working, like support for banked code and data and so on

The last version in the OLD repo is 2.96 although releases are available until 2.95-3. Version 2.96 is the starting point of this repo

Usage

Most users will only need to download and unzip the latest release

Then go to the examples folder and build them (with make.bat on windows or running make). They are a good starting point.

Docs

Online documentation is avaliable HERE

For SDCC you can check its website and the manual

The Game Boy Development Forum is a good place to search for answers.

There is also a #gbdk channel in the gbdev Discord community

Build instructions

Unless you are interested on recompiling the sources for some reason (like fixing some bugs) you don't need to build GBDK

• Windows only: Download and install mingw
• Clone, download this repo or just get the source form the releases
• Download and install sdcc nightlies from 4.0.4 #11952 onwards (SDCC is no longer part of GDDK so you need to download it (just the binaries) in the platform you need)
• On Linux don't use package managers The latest release available won't work, you need to compile or download one of the nightlies
• Create and environment var SDCCDIR pointint to the folder where you installed sdcc
• Open a command prompt or a terminal, go the root directory of the repo and run make