README.md

Windows

This is a port to add Windows support on other targets (Node, GLFW, etc).

The files produced by building mbgl-core target can be reused as libraries in other projects.

Prerequisites

The Windows port, for while, relies on Microsoft Visual Studio to build MapLibre Native, either using Ninja or Microsoft Visual Studio. The build was tested with Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition. Other 2022 editions might work as well. Earlier versions are not guaranteed to work, but Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 might work.

To install the required Visual Studio components, open Visual Studio Installer and check Desktop Development with C++ option. Make sure C++ CMake tools for Windows is selected in the right pane. If git is not already installed, select Git for Windows option in Individual Components. When Visual Studio finishes the install process, everything is ready to start.

Downloading sources

Open x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022 and then clone the repository:

git clone --recurse-submodules -j8 https://github.com/maplibre/maplibre-native.git
cd maplibre-native

Configuring

Configure the build with the following command:

cmake . -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

It will take some time to build and install all components on which Maplibre depends.

Alternative configure commands

To configure build with EGL support (ANGLE libraries will be build), use the following command:

cmake . -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DMLN_WITH_EGL=ON

To configure build with OSMesa (software rendering), use the following command:

cmake . -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DMLN_WITH_OSMESA=ON

WARNING: as OSMesa doesn't have static libraries, it's necessary to copy libglapi.dll, libGLESv2.dll and osmesa.dll from platform\windows\vendor\mesa3d\<arch> to executable/dll directory you want to use, otherwise it won't run.

Building

Finally, build the project with the following command:

cmake --build build

Building with Microsoft Visual Studio

Just omit the -G Ninja option from the configure command:

cmake . -B build

The same can be done with alternative configure commands:

cmake . -B build -DMLN_WITH_EGL=ON

or

cmake . -B build -DMLN_WITH_OSMESA=ON

Once configure is done, open the file build\Mapbox GL Native.sln. Build the target ALL_BUILD to build all targets, or pick a specific target. Don't forget to pick a build configuration (Release, RelWithDebInfo, MinSizeRel or Debug), otherwise the project will be built with default configuration (Debug).

Testing

If all went well and target mbgl-render or ALL_BUILD was chosen, there should now be a maplibre-native\build\bin\mbgl-render.exe binary that you can run to generate map tile images. To test that it is working properly, run the following command.

.\build\bin\mbgl-render.exe --style https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maplibre/demotiles/gh-pages/style.json --output out.png

This should produce an out.png map tile image with the default MapLibre styling from the MapLibre demo.

Using your own style/tiles

You can also use the mbgl-render command to render images from your own style or tile set. To do so, you will need a data source and a style JSON file.

For the purposes of this exercise, you can use the zurich_switzerland.mbtiles from here, and the following style.json file.

{
  "version": 8,
  "name": "Test style",
  "center": [
    8.54806714892635,
    47.37180823552663
  ],
  "sources": {
    "test": {
      "type": "vector",
      "url": "mbtiles:///path/to/zurich_switzerland.mbtiles"
    }
  },
  "layers": [
    {
      "id": "background",
      "type": "background",
      "paint": {
        "background-color": "hsl(47, 26%, 88%)"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "water",
      "type": "fill",
      "source": "test",
      "source-layer": "water",
      "filter": [
        "==",
        "$type",
        "Polygon"
      ],
      "paint": {
        "fill-color": "hsl(205, 56%, 73%)"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "admin_country",
      "type": "line",
      "source": "test",
      "source-layer": "boundary",
      "filter": [
        "all",
        [
          "<=",
          "admin_level",
          2
        ],
        [
          "==",
          "$type",
          "LineString"
        ]
      ],
      "layout": {
        "line-cap": "round",
        "line-join": "round"
      },
      "paint": {
        "line-color": "hsla(0, 8%, 22%, 0.51)",
        "line-width": {
          "base": 1.3,
          "stops": [
            [
              3,
              0.5
            ],
            [
              22,
              15
            ]
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Note that this style is totally inadequate for any real use beyond testing your custom setup. Don't forget to replace the source URL "mbtiles:///path/to/zurich_switzerland.mbtiles" with the actual path to your mbtiles file.

From your maplibre-native/ dir, run the following command.

.\build\bin\mbgl-render --style path\to\style.json --output out.png

This should produce an out.png image in your current directory with a barebones image of the world.