Is there a way to build and compile blender without vs and cmake?

Hello everyone,

-I am trying to build blender for the first time using the wiki procedure.
-Ive managed to clone the repository source code and checkout the pre compiled code using git and tortoiseSVN.
-When I went to build using cmake cmd line tool I received errors saying that it couldn’t find my lib directory. Is there somewhere specific that I need to put it?
-When I used the cmake GUI it threw an error about needing a minimum version added to the top of every cmakelist.txt file. Do I really need to or will that mess it up even more?

  • When I tried to build from within vs 17 I had no cmake option available.

I know this is rudimentary stuff but if someone could give me the " for dummies" version of this whole process I would be extreamely greatful. I’ve bee trying to do this for 4 days now and keep up short at one step or another.

the lib should be in the same folder you run git the first time, which means the folder that contains \blender

Thanks fablefox! That did the trick. I also downloaded a slightly older version of cmake as well because I kept getting some weird halts from it and it ran smoothly. Do you have any recommendations on sites for beginner blender developers? Or do you recommend just diving in and rooting through some code?

Sorry, I was busy with real life work.

No, I don’t have recommendation as I’m a beginners myself. I installed and compiled the code so that I can run debugger and debug some bugs. That help developers to focus on fixing the issue instead (https://developer.blender.org/T52068) and (https://developer.blender.org/T52237) for example.

I’m refreshing my C/C++ skill (last I touched it was around 17 or 18 years ago, when I was at uni). I was lucky as OpenGL Development Cookbook was one of the free Packt e-book, so I’m learning it later.

So I’m focusing on that two first before going into Blender code. But I will help debug bugs here and there when I have time.