Required C++ Tools

Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/geode-sdk/docs/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

• A C++ compiler
• CMake - Version 3.29+ is required - make sure to add to PATH when installing on Windows.
• Git - Hey you. Yes, you! I know a lot of people skip this step but you will need it. Don’t come at us asking for why you “could not find git for clone of json-populate”.

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Compiler

• Clang (recommended) or Visual Studio 2022+ on Windows
• Clang on MacOS
• A secret third thing on Linux

• Windows (Clang)
• Windows (Visual Studio)
• macOS
• Linux

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Install LLVM and Ninja

First, install LLVM and Ninja. The easiest way is using Scoop:

scoop install llvm ninja

LLVM itself does not come with Windows SDK and CRT libraries, so you will need a minimal Visual Studio install for these, which is described in the next section.

Visual Studio 2022 or higher is required. If you have an older version already installed, you should upgrade to the latest available.

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Install Build Tools

Unless you want to install Visual Studio (the editor) itself, we recommend installing just the build tools.

1

Download Build Tools

Open the VS download page, scroll to the bottom, and under “Tools for Visual Studio” download Build Tools for Visual Studio.

2

Select Components

After launching the installer, select Desktop development with C++ and optionally deselect all features except for MSVC Build Tools and Windows SDK, like on the screenshot below.

3

Install

Click Install and wait for it to finish.

Once Visual Studio is installed, you should now have a working C++ compiler that is suited for GD mod development.

Install brew if you don’t already have it, and then run:

brew install llvm

Linux is a bit more complicated, as there’s no official Linux release of GD (yet). Of course, you can run the Windows version of GD through software like wine quite well, which is probably what you’re already doing.Because of that, this guide will set you up to cross-compile Windows Geode mods from Linux.

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Install Required Packages

First, besides Git and CMake, make sure you have clang and lld installed.

For CMake make sure you have at least version 3.29, some distributions like Debian and Linux Mint ship older versions which are not able to cross-compile Geode mods.

Ubuntu

Fedora

Arch

apt install clang-19 clang-tools-19 lld-19

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Install Windows SDK and Toolchain

The next step will install the Windows SDK and a CMake toolchain. For ease of installation, first install the Geode CLI and then come back here. If you want to do it manually, you can follow this guide.After installing the CLI, run this command to install all the needed tools:

geode sdk install-linux

Now you can proceed to setting up Geode CLI.