MSVC builds

For up-do-date instructions for your version of openvpn also check the file README.cmake.md in the openvpn source code.

The following tools are expected to be present on the system, you can install them with a package manager of your choice (e.g. chocolatey, winget) or manually:

• CMake (>= 3.21)
• Git
• Python (3.x), plus the Python module docutils
• Visual Studion 17 (2022), C/C++ Enviroment

For example, to prepare the required tools with chocolatey, you can use the following commands (Powershell):

# Installing Chocolatey
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))
& choco.exe install -y git --params "/GitAndUnixToolsOnPath"
& choco.exe install -y python
& python.exe -m ensurepip
& python.exe -m pip install --upgrade pip
& python.exe -m pip install docutils
& choco.exe install -y cmake --installargs 'ADD_CMAKE_TO_PATH=System'
& choco.exe install -y "visualstudio2022buildtools"
& choco.exe install -y "visualstudio2022-workload-vctools" --params "--add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.UWP.VC.ARM64 --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.ARM64 --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.ATL.Spectre --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.ATLMFC.Spectre --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.ATL.ARM64.Spectre --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.MFC.ARM64.Spectre --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Runtimes.ARM64.Spectre --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Runtimes.x86.x64.Spectre --quiet"
& choco.exe install -y windows-sdk-10-version-2004-windbg

One or more restarts of Powershell might be required to pick up new additions to PATH between steps. A Windows restart is probably required after installing Visual Studio before being able to use it. You can find the exact commands we use to set up the community build machines at ​https://github.com/OpenVPN/openvpn-buildbot/blob/master/jenkins/windows-server/msibuild.pkr.hcl

To do a default build, assuming you are in a MSVC 17 2022 environment:

mkdir C:\OpenVPN
cd C:\OpenVPN
git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg.git
git clone https://github.com/OpenVPN/openvpn.git
set VCPKG_ROOT=C:\OpenVPN\vcpkg
cd openvpn
cmake --preset win-amd64-release
cmake --build --preset win-amd64-release
ctest --preset win-amd64-release

When using the presets, the build directory is out/build/<preset-name>/, you can find the output files there. No install support is provided directly in OpenVPN build, take a look at ​https://github.com/OpenVPN/openvpn-build.git instead.