Build system

Our build system uses Premake 5. For convenience, we keep the premake5.exe binary in the bin directory.

Premake generates the Visual Studio solution in the vs2022 directory and the ignored Ninja graph in ninja/, both from premake5.lua. The generated solution files are stored in the repository for convenience.

bun cmd/build.ts builds with MSBuild by default. Pass -ninja to generate the Ninja graph when needed and build with Ninja instead. To regenerate the graph without building, run bun cmd/ninja.ts.

When to run premake #

Premake regenerates Visual Studio project files from the premake5.*.lua files.

You only need to do that if you add or remove source files.

To regenerate them:

install bun
make changes to premake5.*.lua files, most likely premake5.files.lua
run bun .\cmd\premake.ts

Relevant files:

PS C:\Users\kjk\src\sumatrapdf> ls *.lua
Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
-a----         4/24/2020 12:20 AM          22947 premake5.files.lua
-a----          5/4/2020  7:51 PM          23565 premake5.lua

Customize the build #

Sometimes we want to customize the build with #ifdef. We could do it by adding additional configurations, but that can spiral out of control quickly.

Instead, we have the src\BuildConfig.h file. It’s empty by default, but you can change it to add your #define customization.

Build variants #

We have Debug, Release, and ReleaseAnalyze configurations. ReleaseAnalyze runs code analysis.

We have platforms:

Win32 : 32-bit build
x64 : 64-bit build
x64_asan : 64-bit build with additional runtime AddressSanitizer checks. Only 64-bit builds support AddressSanitizer, for simplicity

SumatraPDF documentation

Build system