Building Dolphin

[Kurausukun]

So I'm not a fan of the new video dumping settings, but I also recognize they're easier to maintain across multiple platforms, so I doubt the devs will go back to the old ones. The logical course of action for me, then, seems to be going back to a build that still used the settings and replacing the relevant lines of code in the latest master source--i.e. make my own custom build. Once I've bisected and I know which lines of code to delete/add, we get to the real issue: I've never built anything, and I have no idea how to. I remember I tried building Dolphin once for the heck of it, but I remember getting errors and also not having any idea where anything went. Is there a guide written in exhaustive detail somewhere explaining what the process is for building Dolphin, or is someone willing to walk me through it?

[Helios]

This isn't easily doable. The "old settings" are going back to Video for Windows, which was entirely removed in favor of ffmpeg. What you would have to do is use git and rebase the old parts that have VFW onto the new source and then fix the conflicts you'll likely run into, and then compile. This isn't the simplest thing to do.

[JosJuice]

You're using Windows, right? There are basically five steps to building Dolphin:

1. Install git. During the installation, it will ask you if you want to be able to use git from the regular Windows command-line. Say yes to being able to use git, but don't pick the option it says is dangerous. If you pick the option to not be able to use git from the Windows command-line, you will get an error when trying to build Dolphin later.
2. Use git to clone the Dolphin repository, https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin. You can find detailed instructions by Googling someting like "git clone".
3. Install Visual Studio 2015 Update 2. The Community edition is available free of charge.
4. Install Windows 10 SDK (version 10.0.10586.0). Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 offers this as an optional component during install, which is a simple way to get it.
5. In the Dolphin folder you got from step 2, open Source/dolphin_emu.sln. At the top of the Visual Studio window, change the dropdown saying Debug to Release (otherwise Dolphin's performance will be bad) and press the green play button (I think it has the text Local Windows Debugger). When a window pops up and asks if you want to rebuild stuff, pick Yes.

Reverting the change to FFmpeg takes some more work in git, but let's wait with that until you can build a normal version of Dolphin. Also, do note that we changed to FFmpeg for more reasons than having the same code for all platforms. You may run into problems with the old dumping method.

[Kurausukun]

Ah, I see. I hadn't considered that, I figured it was just a matter of re-adding a removed component. Is there no chance at all that we could at least get an "uncompressed" frame dump option? The problem with the new dumping is it's so ridiculously slow--and realistically, you're going to be editing the video and thus re-encoding it anyway, so I don't see the point of dumping a compressed video.

EDIT: Thanks for the tutorial, JosJuice. Luckily I have experience with git, but it was helpful to know which components to install with Visual Studio. Unfortunately, I can't quite get it to build; when I try, I get the following output at the end of the build:

========== Build: 26 succeeded, 2 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========

And in the error list tab, I get:

Severity Code Description Project File Line Suppression State
Error C2259 'DX12::ID3D12QueuedCommandList': cannot instantiate abstract class D3D12 C:\Users\Nicetry\Desktop\Dolphin\Source\Core\VideoBackends\D3D12\D3DCommandListManager.cpp 52

Severity Code Description Project File Line Suppression State
Error C2664 'void ID3D12GraphicsCommandList::SetDescriptorHeaps(UINT,ID3D12DescriptorHeap **)': cannot convert argument 2 from 'ID3D12DescriptorHeap *const *' to 'ID3D12DescriptorHeap **' D3D12 C:\Users\Nicetryagain\Desktop\Dolphin\Source\Core\VideoBackends\D3D12\D3DQueuedCommandList.cpp 172

Severity Code Description Project File Line Suppression State
Error LNK1181 cannot open input file 'C:\Users\Nope\Desktop\Dolphin\Build\x64\Release\D3D12\bin\D3D12.lib' Dolphin C:\Users\Ben\Desktop\Dolphin\Source\Core\DolphinWX\LINK 1

I do get a Build folder, but there's no built .exe to be found, just a buttload of folders with assorted files, mostly .obj.

[JosJuice]

The problem with uncompressed video is that it takes a whole lot of space, especially if you're dumping in HD and 60 fps. Adding uncompressed frame dumping to Dolphin doesn't sound complicated, though.

[Kurausukun]

Very true, but I also have plenty of space to spare--and really, digital media gets cheaper by the day, so stuff taking up a lot of space isn't that much of an issue. Either way, that's the advantage of having the option--people like me who have space can use uncompressed, and people who don't have a lot of free space can use one of the compressed options.

[JosJuice]

I missed the edit to your previous post about the build error. The problem could be that you have the wrong version of the Windows 10 SDK. If you're using a version of Dolphin from this month, 10.0.10586.0 will work but not 10.0.10240.0.

[mimimi]

My guess is that you did not check the "Universal Windows App Development Tools" option during the VS installation. Also make sure to use the update 2 version of the installer.

[JosJuice]

(04-16-2016, 08:45 PM)mimimi Wrote: My guess is that you did not check the "Universal Windows App Development Tools" option during the VS installation. Also make sure to use the update 2 version of the installer.

I don't think any of those are the reason for the build failure. Not installing the Windows 10 SDK gives an error about a missing header, and not using Update 2 gives an error in scmrev.h.

[Kurausukun]

You're right, I didn't install the correct version of the Windows 10 SDK (I didn't see there were two options). Thanks for tipping me off, I'll reinstall tomorrow.