How to build the Nextcloud desktop client on Windows

This allows you to easily build the desktop client for 64-bit and 32-bit Windows.

ℹ️ It assumes you have installed the dependencies as explained in nextcloud/desktop-client-blueprints/README.

💻 Included and fully automated

• Build client for 64-bit and 32-bit Windows (+ installer package containing both)
• Code Signing of the client binaries (exe + dll's), the installer and the uninstaller
• Uploading the generated installer package via SSH connection (scp)
• Script file to be invoked by the Windows Task Scheduler for automatic builds (e.g.: daily)

💙 Motivation

• Everybody should be able to build the Windows client, the build scripts and guide here should help to make this a pain-free experience.
• It's designed to be a drop-in replacement for the existing build scripts, used to create the official Nextcloud releases.

📕 System requirements

• Windows 10 / 8 / 7, 64-bit (bare metal or virtual machine, Win 10 + Win 7 successfully tested)
• All the tools from the Install list below
• Internet connection for each build
• At least 10 GB disk space for the build files and more gigs for the required tools

❓ Optional

• Code Signing certificate, if you intend to sign the binaries (you may use a self-generated one for testing)
• SSH server and credentials for the upload to work

☕ General

• Grab a cup of coffee
• Download of the Windows 10 x64 VM: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/ or use your native Windows if you don't want to use a VM.

📝 Install list

• KDE Craft: https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/development/Windows

• Git bash (it comes with Git): https://git-scm.com/download/win

• png2ico - PNG to icon converter:

  • https://www.winterdrache.de/freeware/png2ico/
  • Download it to C:/Nextcloud/tools/png2ico.exe

• Inkscape: https://inkscape.org/release

• 📂 Assumed working folders

  • Create folders:
    • C:\Nextcloud
    • C:\Nextcloud\tools

  ℹ️ Don't use white spaces in the build (project) paths, since this breaks support for some tools like png2ico!

  ℹ️ If you prefer to, you may specify a project directory outside of the cloned client-building repo.

To build MSI installers:

• MSI is available with NC 3.0.2 and up
• Install the WiX Toolset build tools: https://wixtoolset.org/releases/
• Set: BUILD_INSTALLER_MSI=1

⚠️ NSIS is not required anymore since we use MSI, without NSIS set: BUILD_INSTALLER=0

To upload builds

• https://success.tanaza.com/s/article/How-to-use-SCP-command-on-Windows

❕ Don't forget to manually connect via ssh for the first time in order to trust the host key!

Build the client: Initial setup

This has to be done ONLY ONCE to create the build folder structure and fetch the required repos (qtkeychain, zlib and Nextcloud's desktop):

1. Open Git Bash:

cd /c/Nextcloud
git clone https://github.com/nextcloud/client-building.git client-building

2. Take a look at this file and adapt the environment variables to your needs. You may also define them in the Windows Environment Variables settings, if you don't want modify the file directly:

• C:\Nextcloud\client-building\defaults.inc.bat

3. Again in Git Bash:

cd client-building
./init.bat

4. Recommended: Do a test run to check for all the required environment variables:

TEST_RUN=1 ./build.bat

⚠️ This only tests for the existence of all variables, no other file or folder checks will be perfomed.

💥 If the real build fails the scripts will stop and return an error code which is pretty helpful for automated builds. It appears for example in the Task Scheduler.

Build the client: Perform the actual build

When the initial setup is done, only the following needs to be done if you want to build the client at any time later:

• In Git Bash again:

  ./build.bat
  

  • OR instead, if you want the output in a log file:

  ./task-build-log.bat
  

• By default the commands above will build Release for 64-bit and 32-bit.

Specifying build types (Release, Debug)

• ℹ️ Examples:

  ./build.bat Release
  

  ./task-build-log.bat Debug
  

• To build Release, collect all files but build no installer, don't sign and don't upload:

  BUILD_INSTALLER=0 USE_CODE_SIGNING=0 UPLOAD_BUILD=0 ./build.bat Release
  

📎 Build scripts list

• build.bat invokes all the other build scripts, stages are:

  1. build-qtkeychain.bat

     • builds the Qt Keychain library (https://github.com/frankosterfeld/qtkeychain)

  2. build-zlib.bat

     • builds the latest stable zlib (https://github.com/madler/zlib)

  3. build-desktop.bat

     • builds the Nextcloud Desktop Sync Client (https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop)

  4. build-installer-collect.bat

     • collects all the required files and libs for the client and signs some of them

  5. build-installer-exe.bat

     • builds and signs the combined installer package for Win64 + Win32

ℹ️ They need to be run in the correct order above and all the previous scripts should have succeeded. The parameter syntax is the same as for build.bat.

ℹ️ These scripts contain a loop which invoke their single-build-*.bat helpers and they also set the required environment variables you normally would have to specify manually. Exception: build-installer-exe.bat doesn't need a loop since it builds a combined installer package, so there is no single-build-installer-exe.bat. Of course you could do this, e.g. calling syntax to only build for 32-bit would be:

./single-build-desktop.bat Release Win32

Upon every new invocation the build scripts fetch the newest version of their repo.

How the scripts work

👀 Take a look at the scripts if you want to know how they work, which resources they collect and the CMake options and generators they use.

• init.bat

  • clones the GitHub repos and creates required directories

• defaults.inc.bat

  • sets all required variables if not already present in the environment

• common.inc.bat

  • determines the build type (Release or Debug) and sets the CMake generator

• datetime.inc.bat + datetime.inc.callee

  • provide a locale-independent way to get a unified build date instead of using %DATE%

• build-installer-collect.bat

  • collects all required libraries and resources the client needs at runtime (Qt, Qt Keychain, zlib, OpenSSL, VC Redist, etc.)

• task-build-log.bat

  • is intended to by used in conjunction with the Windows Task Scheduler but may also be run manually instead of build.bat, which shows all the output in the console window only

• task-build-job.sh

  • is the actual script to be specified in the Windows Task Scheduler to be run by Git Bash

• sign.bat

  • used for signing the binaries, the installer and the uninstaller

• upload.bat

  • used for uploading the installer package to a server (using scp)

✒️ Which binaries get signed?

• The following binaries get signed by build-installer-collect.bat as we're responsible for them or they're critical for security and privacy:
  • all the binaries we produce:
    • nextcloud/ocsync.dll
    • shellext/NCContextMenu.dll
    • shellext/NCOverlays.dll
    • nextcloud.exe
    • nextcloudcmd.exe
    • nextcloudsync.dll
    • ocsync.dll
    • OCUtil.dll
    • qt5keychain.dll
    • zlib.dll
  • the pre-compiled OpenSSL binaries (since they are not signed but integrity is crucial)
    • libcrypto*.dll
    • libssl*.dll
  • we don't sign Qt, as of version 5.12.4 binaries are now signed by the Qt team
  • VC Runtime DLL's are already signed by Microsoft

License

Copyright (c) 2019 Michael Schuster
Parts based on work at: https://github.com/nextcloud/client-building/tree/6b2d7d34f7d79ccb7fcbc6b285da1f6f8f2bbfc8

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
for more details.