4.1. Prerequisites

4.1.1. VisIt’s Source Code

4.1.1.1. For a released version

For building a released version of VisIt version 3.2.1 or earlier, you can download a windows installer that contains all that is necessary from the downloads page. Look for the Win 10/8/7 development link for the particular version you want. The file will be named visitdev3.2.1.exe (or similar, based on version chosen).

For building a released version of VisIt version 3.2.2 or newer, download the Source tgz file as well as the Win 10 development file which will be named visit_windowsdev_3.2.2.zip (or similar, based on version chosen). The .zip file contains all the pre-built third-party binaries needed for building VisIt on Windows. It is best to extract these files to the same folder so that src from the source tarball is peer to windowsbuild from the windows-dev zip file.

4.1.1.2. For the latest development version

If you want to build the latest development version from our repository, you need to obtain source from the visit repo, and the pre-built third party dependencies from the visit-deps repo on GitHub.

4.1.2. Other Software

  1. CMake version 3.24 or greater.

    • Don’t use the CMake included with cygwin if you plan on using the pre-built thirdparty libraries.

  2. Visual Studio 2022 (VisIt 3.4.0 and newer) or Visual Studio 2017

    • Needed if you want to use our pre-built thirdparty libraries.

  3. NSIS Optional

    • For creating an installer for VisIt. NSIS 2 or 3 should work.

  4. Microsoft MPI. Optional

    • For building VisIt’s parallel engine. Redistributable binaries and SDK’s are needed, so download and install both msmpisdk.msi and msmpisetup.exe.