Building on Windows

Build FreeRDP on Windows using MSVC with CMake and Ninja, or cross-compile with LLVM-MinGW on Linux.

MSVC (native)

Requirements

• Visual Studio 2019 or later (any edition, including Build Tools)
• CMake >= 3.13
• Ninja (bundled with Visual Studio, or install separately)
• A pre-built OpenSSL distribution for Windows (e.g. from Shining Light or vcpkg)

Opening a developer prompt

All CMake commands must be run inside a Visual Studio Developer Command Prompt, or from a standard cmd/PowerShell session that has already sourced vcvarsall.bat:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvarsall.bat" x64

Build

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/FreeRDP/FreeRDP.git C:\freerdp\src
   
2. Configure with CMake

   cmake -GNinja ^
     -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ^
     -DWITH_VERBOSE_WINPR_ASSERT=OFF ^
     -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=C:\freerdp\install ^
     -B C:\freerdp\build ^
     -S C:\freerdp\src
   
3. Compile and install

   cmake --build C:\freerdp\build --target install
   

CI preload configuration

The repository ships ci/cmake-preloads/config-windows.txt with recommended Windows settings:

set(CMAKE_WINDOWS_VERSION "WIN7" CACHE STRING "windows build version")
set(BUILD_SHARED_LIBS OFF CACHE BOOL "build static linked executable")
set(CMAKE_MSVC_RUNTIME_LIBRARY "MultiThreaded" CACHE STRING "MSVC runtime to use")
set(OPENSSL_USE_STATIC_LIBS ON CACHE BOOL "link OpenSSL static")
set(WITH_SERVER ON CACHE BOOL "build with server")
set(WITH_CLIENT_SDL ON CACHE BOOL "build with SDL client")
set(CHANNEL_URBDRC OFF CACHE BOOL "USB redirection")

Apply it with:

cmake -C C:\freerdp\src\ci\cmake-preloads\config-windows.txt ^
  -GNinja ^
  -B C:\freerdp\build ^
  -S C:\freerdp\src

cmake --build C:\freerdp\build

Notable Windows flags

Flag	Description
BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF	Produce a statically linked executable.
OPENSSL_USE_STATIC_LIBS=ON	Link OpenSSL statically.
CMAKE_MSVC_RUNTIME_LIBRARY=MultiThreaded	Use the static MSVC runtime (/MT).
WITH_WIN_CONSOLE=ON	Attach a console window to the client executable.
WITH_SHADOW=OFF	Disable the shadow server (not supported on Windows).
WITH_CLIENT_SDL=ON	Build the SDL2 client.
WITH_SDL_LINK_SHARED=OFF	Link SDL2 statically.
ZLIB_USE_STATIC_LIBS=ON	Link zlib statically.

MinGW cross-compile

Overview

FreeRDP can be cross-compiled for Windows from a Linux host using llvm-mingw, which supports both msvcrt and ucrt runtimes.

MinGW builds are not actively maintained. The build may occasionally break. Pull requests to maintain MinGW support are welcome.

A maintained sample build script is located at scripts/mingw.sh in the repository and is periodically exercised by the CI workflow at .github/workflows/mingw.yml.

A complete Docker-based build example for LLVM-MinGW is provided at docs/mingw-example/ in the repository.

Docker-based example build

The docs/mingw-example/ directory contains a Dockerfile and helper scripts that build all dependencies (zlib, OpenSSL, OpenH264, libusb, FAAC, FAAD2) and FreeRDP itself inside a Docker container.

1. Build for x86_64

   cd docs/mingw-example
   ./build_x64.sh
   
2. Build for ARM64

   cd docs/mingw-example
   ./build_arm64.sh
   
3. Build for x86 (32-bit)

   cd docs/mingw-example
   ./build_ia32.sh
   

Each script sets TARGET_ARCH and calls _build.sh, which runs docker compose up to produce the Windows binaries.

Manual cross-compile with llvm-mingw

1. Install llvm-mingw

   Download a pre-built release from github.com/mstorsjo/llvm-mingw and extract it, e.g. to /usr/local.

2. Configure with the toolchain file

   A CMake toolchain file for each target triple is expected at docs/mingw-example/toolchain/cmake/<arch>-w64-mingw32-toolchain.cmake.

   cmake -GNinja \
     -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=docs/mingw-example/toolchain/cmake/x86_64-w64-mingw32-toolchain.cmake \
     -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/build \
     -DWITH_X11=OFF \
     -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF \
     -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
     -B build -S .
   
3. Build

   cmake --build build -j $(nproc)
   cmake --install build