We do not recommend Windows for rippled production use at this time. Currently, the Ubuntu platform has received the highest level of quality assurance, testing, and support.

Prerequisites

To clone the source code repository, create branches for inspection or modification, build rippled under Visual Studio, and run the unit tests you will need these software components:

Visual Studio 2015
Git for Windows
Google Protocol Buffers Compiler
OpenSSL Library
- ActivePerl (Recommended to build OpenSSL.)
Boost 1.59 library
Node.js

Any version of Visual Studio 2015 may be used, including the Visual Studio Community Edition which is available under a free license.

Install Software

Install Visual Studio 2015

If not already installed on your system, download your choice of installers from the Visual Studio 2015 Download page, run the installer, and follow the directions. The Visual Studio 2015 Community edition is available for free, while paid editions may be used for an free initial trial period.

Install Git for Windows

Git is a distributed revision control system. The Windows version also provides the bash shell and many Windows versions of Unix commands. While there are other varieties of Git (such as TortoiseGit, which has a native Windows interface and integrates with the Explorer shell), we recommend installing Git for Windows since it provides a Unix-like command line environment useful for running shell scripts. Use of the bash shell under Windows is mandatory for running the unit tests.

NOTE: To gain full featured access to the git-subtree functionality used in the rippled repository we suggest Git version 1.8.3.2 or later.

Install Google Protocol Buffers Compiler

Building rippled requires protoc.exe version 2.5.1 or later. At your option you may build it yourself from the sources in the Google Protocol Buffers repository, or you may download a protoc.exe (alternate link) precompiled Windows executable from the Ripple Organization.

Either way, once you have the required version of protoc.exe, copy it into a folder in your command line %PATH%.

NOTE: If you use an older version of the compiler, the build will fail with errors related to a mismatch of the version of protocol buffer headers versus the compiler.

Install ActivePerl

If not already installed on your system, download your choice of installers from the Activeperl Download page, run the installer, and follow the directions.

Configure Dependencies

Install OpenSSL

Download OpenSSL v1.0.2d or higher source https://www.openssl.org/source/
Unpack the source archive into a temporary folder.
Open cmd.exe. Change the the folder where you unpacked OpenSSL.

Build the 64-bit libraries: ( Reference 1, Reference 2)

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\bin\vcvars32.bat"
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\bin\amd64\vcvars64.bat"

perl Configure VC-WIN64A --prefix=C:\lib\openssl-VC-64
ms\do_win64a
nmake -f ms\nt.mak
nmake -f ms\nt.mak install

copy tmp32\lib.pdb C:\lib\openssl-VC-64\lib\

Optionally, delete the temporary folder.

NOTE: Since rippled links statically to OpenSSL, it does not matter where the OpenSSL .DLL files are placed, or what version they are. rippled does not use or require any external .DLL files to run other than the standard operating system ones.

Build Boost

After downloading boost and unpacking it, open a Developer Command Prompt for Visual Studio, change to the directory containing boost, then bootstrap the build tools:

cd C:\lib\boost_1_59_0
bootstrap

The rippled application is linked statically to the standard runtimes and external dependencies on Windows, to ensure that the behavior of the executable is not affected by changes in outside files. Therefore, it is necessary to build the required boost static libraries using this command:

bjam --toolset=msvc-14.0 --build-type=complete variant=debug,release link=static runtime-link=static address-model=64

Building the boost libraries may take considerable time. When the build process is completed, take note of both the reported compiler include paths and linker library paths as they will be required later.

NOTE: If older versions of Visual Studio are also installed, the build may fail. If this happens, make sure that only Visual Studio 2015 is installed. Due to defects in the uninstallation procedures of these Microsoft products, it may be necessary to start with a fresh install of the operating system with only the necessary development environment components installed to have a successful build.

Clone the rippled repository

If you are familiar with cloning github repositories, just follow your normal process and clone git@github.com:ripple/rippled.git. Otherwise follow this section for instructions.

If you don't have a github account, sign up for one at github.com.
Make sure you have Github ssh keys. For help see generating-ssh-keys.

Open the "Git Bash" shell that was installed with "Git for Windows" in the step above. Navigate to the directory where you want to clone rippled (git bash uses /c for windows's C: and forward slash where windows uses backslash, so C:\Users\joe\projs would be /c/Users/joe/projs in git bash). Now clone the repository and optionally switch to the master branch. Type the following at the bash prompt:

git clone git@github.com:ripple/rippled.git
cd rippled
git checkout master

If you receive an error about not having the "correct access rights" make sure you have Github ssh keys, as described above.

Configure Library Paths

Open the solution file located at Builds/Visual Studio 2015/ripple.sln and select the "View->Other Windows->Property Manager" to bring up the Property Manager. Expand the debug | x64 section (or similar section on 32-windows) and double click the Microsoft.Cpp.x64.user property sheet to bring up the Property Pages dialog (these sections will be called Win32 instead of x64 on 32-bit windows). These are global properties applied to all 64-bit build targets:

Go to C/C++, General, Additional Include Directories and add the location of the boost installation:

Then, go to Linker, General, Additional Library Directories and add the location of the compiled boost libraries reported at the completion of building the boost libraries:

Follow the same procedure for adding the Additional Include Directories and Additional Library Directories required for OpenSSL. In our example these directories are C:\lib\openssl-VC-64\include and C:\lib\openssl-VC-64\lib respectively.

Setup Environment

Create a working directory for rippled.cfg

The rippled server uses the Rippled.cfg file to read its configuration parameters. This section describes setting up a directory to hold the config file. The next sections describe how to tell the rippled server where that file is.

Create a directory to hold the configuration file. In this example, the ripple config directory was created in C:\Users\joe\ripple\config.
Copy the example config file located in doc\rippled-example.cfg to the new directory and rename it "rippled.cfg".
Read the rippled.cfg file and edit as appropriate.

Change the Visual Studio Projects Debugging Properties

If not already open, open the solution file located at Builds/Visual Studio 2015/Ripple.sln
Select the correct solution platform in the solution platform dropdown (either x64 or Win32 depending on machine type).
Select the "Project->Properties" menu item to bring up RippleD's Properties Pages
In "Configuration Properties" select "Debugging".
In the upper-left Configurations drop down, select "All Configurations".
In "Debugger to Launch" select "Local Windows Debugger".

Tell rippled where to find the configuration file.

The --conf command-line switch to tell rippled where to find this file. In the "Command Arguments" field in the properties dialog (that you opened in the above section), add: --conf="C:/Users/joe/ripple/config/rippled.cfg" (of course replacing that path with the path you set up above).

Set the _NO_DEBUG_HEAP Environment Variable

Rippled can run very slowly in the debugger when using the Windows Debug Heap. Set the _NO_DEBUG_HEAP environment variable to one to disable the debug heap. In the "Environment" field (that you opened in the above section), add: _NO_DEBUG_HEAP=1

Build

After these steps are complete, rippled should be ready to build. Simply set rippled as the startup project by right clicking on it in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer, choose Set as Startup Project, and then choose the Build->Build Solution menu item.

Unit Tests (Recommended)

The external rippled unit tests are written in Javascript using Node.js, and utilize the mocha unit test framework. To run the unit tests, it will be necessary to perform the following steps:

Install Node.js

Install Node.js. We recommend the Windows installer (.msi file) as it takes care of updating the PATH environment variable so that scripts can find the command. On Windows systems, Node.js comes with npm. A separate installation of npm is not necessary.

Create node_modules

Open a windows console. From the root of your local rippled repository directory, invoke npm to bring in the necessary components:

npm install

If you get an error that looks like

Error: ENOENT, stat 'C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\npm'

simply create the indicated folder and try again.

Create a test config.js

From a bash shell (installed with Git for Windows), copy the example configuration file into the appropriate location:

cp test/config-example.js test/config.js

Edit your version of test/config.js to reflect the correct path to the rippled executable:

exports.default_server_config = {
  // Where to find the binary.
  rippled_path: path.resolve(__dirname, "../build/msvc.debug/rippled.exe")
};

Also in test/config.js, change any occurrences of the IP address 0.0.0.0 to 127.0.0.1.

Run Tests

From a windows console, run the unit tests:

npm test

Alternatively, run an individual test using mocha:

sh
node_modules/mocha/bin/mocha test/account_tx-test.js

NOTE: The version of ripple-lib provided by the npm install facility is usually slightly behind the develop branch of the authoritative ripple-lib repository. Therefore, some tests might fail.

Development ripple-lib

To use the latest branch of ripple-lib during the unit tests, first clone the repository in a new location outside of your rippled repository. Then update the submodules. After, run npm install to set up the node_modules directory. Finally, install the grunt command line tools required to run grunt and build ripple-lib.

git clone git@github.com:ripple/ripple-lib.git
cd ripple-lib
git submodule update --init
npm install
npm install -g grunt-cli
grunt

Now link this version of ripple-lib into the global packages:

sudo npm link

To make rippled use the newly linked global ripple-lib package instead of the one installed under node_modules, change directories to the local rippled repository and delete the old ripple-lib then link to the new one:

sh
rm -rf node_modules/ripple-lib
npm link ripple-lib