11. Build environment 2-------------------- 3 4To build the system it is strongly advised to use the ReactOS Build Environment 5(RosBE). Up-to-date versions for Windows and for Unix/GNU-Linux are available 6from our download page at: https://reactos.org/wiki/Build_Environment 7 8Alternatively one can use Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC) version 2010+, together 9with separate installations of CMake and the Ninja build utility. 10 11 122. Building ReactOS 13------------------- 14 15A throughout guide for how to build ReactOS can be found at: 16 https://reactos.org/wiki/Building_ReactOS 17 18In the following we only make a quick overview. 19 20 212.1 Building the binaries 22 23To build ReactOS run 'ninja' (without the quotes), or alternatively run 24'make' if you are using the Make utility, from the top directory. 25NOTE: In the other examples listed in the following, similar modification 26holds if you are using the Make utility instead of Ninja. 27If you are using RosBE, follow on-screen instructions. 28 29 302.2 Building a bootable CD image 31 32To build a bootable CD image run 'ninja bootcd' (without the quotes) from the 33top directory. This will create a CD image with a filename, ReactOS.iso, in 34the top directory. 35 36 373. Installation 38--------------- 39 40By default, ReactOS can only be installed on a machine that has a FAT16 or FAT32 41partition as the active (bootable) partition. The partition on which ReactOS is 42to be installed (which may or may not be the bootable partition) must also be 43formatted as FAT16 or FAT32. ReactOS Setup can format the partitions if 44needed. 45 46Starting 0.4.10, ReactOS can be installed using the BtrFS file system. But 47consider this as an experimental feature and thus regressions not triggered on 48FAT setup may be observed. 49 50ReactOS can be installed from the source distribution or from the bootable CD 51distribution. The two ways to install ReactOS are explained below. 52 53 543.1 Installation from sources 55 56If you don't have an existing ReactOS installation you want to upgrade, then 57build a bootable CD as described above. Burn the CD image, boot from it, and 58follow the instructions to install ReactOS. 59 60If you have an existing ReactOS installation you want to upgrade, then to 61install ReactOS after building it, type 'ninja install'. This will create 62the directory 'reactos' in the top directory. Copy the contents of this 63directory over the existing installation. 64 65If you don't want to copy the files manually every time you run a 66'ninja install', then you can specify the directory where the files are 67to be copied to during installation. 68 69Set the ROS_INSTALL environment variable. If you are on Windows this could be 70done by: 71 72 set ROS_INSTALL=c:\reactos 73 74If you are on Linux this could be done by: 75 76 export ROS_INSTALL=/mnt/windows/reactos 77 78Now run 'ninja install' to install the files to the new location. 79 80 813.2 Installation from bootable CD distribution 82 83To install ReactOS from the bootable CD distribution, extract the archive 84contents. Then burn the CD image, boot from it, and follow instructions. 85 86 874. Help 88------- 89 90If you run into problems or have suggestions for making ReactOS better, please 91visit the address below. Mailing lists are available for a variety of topics, 92bugs should be submitted to JIRA and general chat takes place in the forums, 93or #reactos on freenode. 94 95https://reactos.org/ 96 97ReactOS Development Team 98