visualboyadvance-m

• Visual Boy Advance - M
  • System Requirements
  • Building
  • Visual Studio Code Support
  • Dependencies
  • CMake Options
  • Contributing

Visual Boy Advance - M

Game Boy and Game Boy Advance Emulator

Our Discord server is here.

Windows and Mac builds are in the releases tab.

Nightly builds for Windows, macOS, Libretro and Android are at https://nightly.visualboyadvance-m.org/.

PLEASE TEST THE NIGHTLY OR MASTER WITH A FACTORY RESET BEFORE REPORTING ISSUES

Your distribution may have packages available as well, search for visualboyadvance-m or vbam.

To build from source, see below.

If you are having issues, try resetting the config file first, go to Help -> Factory Reset.

System Requirements

Windows XP+, macOS or Linux.

Older and weaker systems may not be able to run the higher level xBRZ and ScaleFX scalers.

For Windows XP install:

• DirectX June 2010 Redist
• Visual C++ runtimes all-on-one pack for January 2021

Building

The basic formula to build vba-m is:

git clone https://github.com/visualboyadvance-m/visualboyadvance-m
cd visualboyadvance-m

./installdeps # On Linux, macOS or MSYS2

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G Ninja
ninja

If ./installdeps does not work, you may need to install dependencies manually, see below for the list. ./installdeps also works on MSYS2.

For builds using automatically downloaded vcpkg packages for dependencies on macOS or Linux use:

cmake .. -DVCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET=**<SYSTEM>** -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G Ninja

, where SYSTEM is one of:

• x64-linux,
• arm64-macos,
• x64-macos

. For Android set ANDROID_HOME and ANDROID_NDK_HOME and use:

• arm64-android
• arm-neon-android
• x64-android
• x86-android
• riscv64-android

. On Windows, vcpkg is the default and that is handled automatically.

If you are in an MSYS2 shell, the MSYS2 package dependencies installed via ./installdeps are the default, unless you pass `-DVCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET= which is one of:

• x64-mingw-static (for MINGW64, UCRT64 or CLANG64),
• x32-mingw-static (for Windows XP builds using a MINGW32 toolchain.)

You can download a MINGW32 toolchain for XP here and extract it to C:\msys64.

A VCPKG_ROOT is automatically created as a sibling of the project directory, unless you set it to something else in your environment.

Visual Studio Code Support

Make sure the C/C++ and CMake Tools extensions are installed.

Add the following to your settings.json:

{
    "cmake.configureOnOpen": true,
    "cmake.preferredGenerators": [ "Ninja" ]
}

.

Dependencies

You will need the following:

• C++ and C compiler and binutils,
• CMake.

And the following development libraries,

all platforms, required:

• zlib,
• Gettext and gettext-tools,
• SDL3 or SDL2,
• wxWidgets,
• bzip2,
• xz/lzma,

optional:

• FFmpeg,
• OpenAL-Soft,
• Lua,
• FAudio,
• Vulkan,

on Linux you will also need:

• glibc-devel,
• mesa,
• GTK3,
• XOrg,
• Wayland,

on macOS you will need MoltenVK for Vulkan support.

CMake Options

The CMake code tries to guess reasonable defaults for options, but you can override them, for example:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DENABLE_LINK=NO -G Ninja

. Here is the list:

CMake Option What it Does Defaults ENABLE_SDL Build the SDL port OFF - Win, ON - rest ENABLE_WX Build the wxWidgets port ON ENABLE_LINK Enable GBA/GB linking functionality ON ENABLE_LIBRETRO Build the libretro core ON BUILD_TESTING Build the tests ON UPSTREAM_RELEASE Do some release tasks, like codesigning and making zips OFF TRANSLATIONS_ONLY Build only the translations.zip and nothing else OFF ENABLE_LTO Compile with Link Time Optimization ON for release build VCPKG_BINARY_PACKAGES Download/use vcpkg binary packages ON - Win, OFF - rest VCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET Enable vcpkg download/use of vcpkg binary packages for that triplet ON - Win, OFF - rest VCPKG_SOURCE_PACKAGES Enable builds of vcpkg deps when binary packageas are not available ON - Win, OFF - rest NO_VCPKG_UPDATES Do not update vcpkg ports from either binaries or source OFF VBAM_STATIC Try to link as many libraries statically as possible ON - Win/MSYS2 or OFF DISABLE_MACOS_PACKAGE_MANAGERS Do not use the detected brew/Nix/MacPorts on macOS OFF ENABLE_SDL3 Use SDL3 not SDL2 ON if detected ENABLE_GENERIC_FILE_DIALOGS Use generic file open/selection dialogs on macOS OFF DISABLE_OPENGL Disable OpenGL support OFF ENABLE_DEBUGGER Enable the debugger ON ENABLE_LUA Enable Lua scripting support for wxWidgets port ON ENABLE_ASAN Use -fsanitize=address for GCC/Clang Debug builds OFF ENABLE_BZ2 Enable bzip2 .bz2 archive support ON ENABLE_LZMA Enable lzma .xz archive support ON ENABLE_LIRC Enable LIRC support OFF ENABLE_FFMPEG Enable ffmpeg A/V recording ON ENABLE_ONLINEUPDATES Enable online update checks ON (release builds) ENABLE_GBA_LOGGING Enable extended GBA logging ON ENABLE_OPENAL Enable openal-soft sound output for wxWidgets ON ENABLE_XAUDIO2 Enable xaudio2 sound output for wxWidgets (Windows only) ON ENABLE_FAUDIO Enable faudio sound output for wxWidgets ON ENABLE_AAUDIO Enable AAudio sound output for wxWidgets (Android only) ON - Android ENABLE_VULKAN Enable Vulkan video output ON ENABLE_GLES Enable the OpenGL ES 2 video output (Android only) ON - Android ENABLE_DIRECT3D Enable Direct3D 9 support (Windows only) ON - Win ENABLE_DIRECT3D12 Enable Direct3D 12 support (Windows only) ON - Win ENABLE_DIRECT3D11 Enable Direct3D 11 support (Windows only) ON - Win ENABLE_WAYLAND_PROTOCOLS Generate Wayland protocol client glue (HDR, viewporter) ON if detected

Note for distro packagers, we use the CMake module GNUInstallDirs to configure installation directories.

On Linux or macOS, to use a different version of wxWidgets, set wxWidgets_CONFIG_EXECUTABLE to the path to the wx-config script you want to use.

Contributing

See the Developer Manual.