Windows - Zed

# Building Zed for Windows

> The following commands may be executed in any shell.

## Repository

Clone down the Zed repository.

## Dependencies

- Install rustup

- Install Visual Studio with the optional components `MSVC v*** - VS YYYY C++ x64/x86 build tools` and `MSVC v*** - VS YYYY C++ x64/x86 Spectre-mitigated libs (latest)` (`v***` is your VS version and `YYYY` is year when your VS was released. Pay attention to the architecture and change it to yours if needed.)

- Install Windows 11 or 10 SDK depending on your system, but ensure that at least `Windows 10 SDK version 2104 (10.0.20348.0)` is installed on your machine. You can download it from the Windows SDK Archive

- Install CMake (required by a dependency). Or you can install it through Visual Studio Installer, then manually add the `bin` directory to your `PATH`, for example: `C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\CMake\CMake\bin`.

If you can't compile Zed, make sure that you have at least the following components installed:

    {
      "version": "1.0",
      "components": [
        "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.CoreEditor",
        "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.CoreEditor",
        "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64",
        "Microsoft.VisualStudio.ComponentGroup.WebToolsExtensions.CMake",
        "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CMake.Project",
        "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows11SDK.26100",
        "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Runtimes.x86.x64.Spectre"
      ],
      "extensions": []
    }

The list can be obtained as follows:

- Open the Visual Studio Installer
- Click on `More` in the `Installed` tab
- Click on `Export configuration`

## Backend dependencies

> This section is still in development. The instructions are not yet complete.

If you are developing collaborative features of Zed, you'll need to install the dependencies of zed's `collab` server:

- Install Postgres
- Install Livekit, optionally you can add the `livekit-server` binary to your `PATH`.

Alternatively, if you have Docker installed you can bring up all the `collab` dependencies using Docker Compose:

    docker compose up -d

### Notes

You should modify the `pg_hba.conf` file in the `data` directory to use `trust` instead of `scram-sha-256` for the `host` method. Otherwise, the connection will fail with the error `password authentication failed`. The `pg_hba.conf` file typically locates at `C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\17\data\pg_hba.conf`. After the modification, the file should look like this:

    # IPv4 local connections:
    host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            trust
    # IPv6 local connections:
    host    all             all             ::1/128                 trust

Also, if you are using a non-latin Windows version, you must modify the`lc_messages` parameter in the `postgresql.conf` file in the `data` directory to `English_United States.1252` (or whatever UTF8-compatible encoding you have). Otherwise, the database will panic. The `postgresql.conf` file should look like this:

    # lc_messages = 'Chinese (Simplified)_China.936' # locale for system error message strings
    lc_messages = 'English_United States.1252'

After this, you should restart the `postgresql` service. Press the `win` key + `R` to launch the `Run` window. Type the `services.msc` and hit the `OK` button to open the Services Manager. Then, find the `postgresql-x64-XX` service, right-click on it, and select `Restart`.

## Building from source

Once you have the dependencies installed, you can build Zed using Cargo.

For a debug build:

    cargo run

For a release build:

    cargo run --release

And to run the tests:

    cargo test --workspace

## Installing from msys2

MSYS2 distribution provides Zed as a package mingw-w64-zed. The package is available for UCRT64, MINGW64 and CLANG64 repositories. To download it, run

    pacman -Syu
    pacman -S $MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX-zed

then you can run `zeditor` CLI. Editor executable is installed under `$MINGW_PREFIX/lib/zed` directory

You can see the build script for more details on build process.

> Please, report any issue in msys2/MINGW-packages/issues first.

Note that `collab` is not supported for MSYS2.

## Troubleshooting

### Setting `RUSTFLAGS` env var breaks builds

If you set the `RUSTFLAGS` env var, it will override the `rustflags` settings in `.cargo/config.toml` which is required to properly build Zed.

Since these settings can vary from time to time, the build errors you receive may vary from linker errors, to other stranger errors.

If you'd like to add extra rust flags, you may do 1 of the following in `.cargo/config.toml`:

Add your flags in the build section

    [build]
    rustflags = ["-C", "symbol-mangling-version=v0", "--cfg", "tokio_unstable"]

Add your flags in the windows target section

    [target.'cfg(target_os = "windows")']
    rustflags = [
        "--cfg",
        "windows_slim_errors",
        "-C",
        "target-feature=+crt-static",
    ]

Or, you can create a new `.cargo/config.toml` in the same folder as the Zed repo (see below). This is particularly useful if you are doing CI builds since you don't have to edit the original `.cargo/config.toml`.

    upper_dir
    ├── .cargo          // <-- Make this folder
    │   └── config.toml // <-- Make this file
    └── zed
        ├── .cargo
        │   └── config.toml
        └── crates
            ├── assistant
            └── ...

In the new (above) `.cargo/config.toml`, if we wanted to add `--cfg gles` to our rustflags, it would look like this

    [target.'cfg(all())']
    rustflags = ["--cfg", "gles"]

### Cargo errors claiming that a dependency is using unstable features

Try `cargo clean` and `cargo build`.

### `STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION`

This error can happen if you are using the "rust-lld.exe" linker. Consider trying a different linker.

If you are using a global config, consider moving the Zed repository to a nested directory and add a `.cargo/config.toml` with a custom linker config in the parent directory.

See this issue for more information #12041

### Invalid RC path selected

Sometimes, depending on the security rules applied to your laptop, you may get the following error while compiling Zed:

    error: failed to run custom build command for `zed(C:\Users\USER\src\zed\crates\zed)`

    Caused by:
      process didn't exit successfully: `C:\Users\USER\src\zed\target\debug\build\zed-b24f1e9300107efc\build-script-build` (exit code: 1)
      --- stdout
      cargo:rerun-if-changed=../../.git/logs/HEAD
      cargo:rustc-env=ZED_COMMIT_SHA=25e2e9c6727ba9b77415588cfa11fd969612adb7
      cargo:rustc-link-arg=/stack:8388608
      cargo:rerun-if-changed=resources/windows/app-icon.ico
      package.metadata.winresource does not exist
      Selected RC path: 'bin\x64\rc.exe'

      --- stderr
      The system cannot find the path specified. (os error 3)
    warning: build failed, waiting for other jobs to finish...

In order to fix this issue, you can manually set the `ZED_RC_TOOLKIT_PATH` environment variable to the RC toolkit path. Usually, you can set it to: `C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\<SDK_version>\x64`.

See this issue for more information.

### Build fails: Path too long

You may receive an error like the following when building

    error: failed to get `pet` as a dependency of package `languages v0.1.0 (D:\a\zed-windows-builds\zed-windows-builds\crates\languages)`

    Caused by:
      failed to load source for dependency `pet`

    Caused by:
      Unable to update https://github.com/microsoft/python-environment-tools.git?rev=ffcbf3f28c46633abd5448a52b1f396c322e0d6c#ffcbf3f2

    Caused by:
      path too long: 'C:/Users/runneradmin/.cargo/git/checkouts/python-environment-tools-903993894b37a7d2/ffcbf3f/crates/pet-conda/tests/unix/conda_env_without_manager_but_found_in_history/some_other_location/conda_install/conda-meta/python-fastjsonschema-2.16.2-py310hca03da5_0.json'; class=Filesystem (30)

In order to solve this, you can enable longpath support for git and Windows.

For git: `git config --system core.longpaths true`

And for Windows with this PS command:

    New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem" -Name "LongPathsEnabled" -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force

For more information on this, please see win32 docs

(note that you will need to restart your system after enabling longpath support)