====== Building the Zotero Desktop App on Windows =====

//**Note:**
If you 1) primarily work on macOS or Linux and just want to test a build on Windows; 2) have [[https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install|WSL]] installed, you don't need to follow these steps. You can simply create an unpackaged Windows build on your main system/WSL with ''app/scripts/dir_build -p w'' and run the application in ''app/staging/'' from Windows.//

Instructions for [[building the Zotero desktop app]] assume a POSIX-compliant system capable of handling symbolic links. These instructions will work out-of-the box on most Linux and macOS systems, but Windows requires a few extra steps.

  - Install [[https://nodejs.org/en/download/|Node.js]] (Node 18 LTS recommended) and [[https://www.cygwin.com/|Cygwin]]. During Cygwin setup, in the "Select Packages" step, select the following additional packages to install: "git", "p7zip", "python3", "wget", "xz", "zip", and "unzip".
  - Run Cygwin Terminal as Administrator (right click -> Run as Administrator). Run the following commands in that Cygwin terminal, in a single session.
  - Force Cygwin to use native windows symlinks: <code sh>export CYGWIN="winsymlinks:nativestrict"</code>
  - Clone the Zotero source code without checking it out: <code sh>git clone --config core.symlinks=true --no-checkout https://github.com/zotero/zotero zotero-client</code>
  - Change to the source code repo, check out required files, and install Node.js modules: <code sh>cd zotero-client
git checkout HEAD package.json package-lock.json
npm install
</code>
  - Check out the remaining files, creating valid symbolic links: <code sh>git checkout -f HEAD
git submodule update --init --recursive</code> //Note//: If you are seeing here errors of the form "error: unable to create symlink [...]: Operation not permitted" then you are not running Cygwin as an administrator (see step 2 above).
  - Fetch ''rcedit'', which is an additional build dependency on Windows:<code sh>app/scripts/fetch_rcedit</code>
  - Continue building the app with ''app/scripts/build_and_run -r'', as explained on [[building_the_zotero_desktop_app|Building the Zotero Desktop App]]

===== Troubleshooting Errors =====

=== line 2: $'\r' : command not found ===

This error is caused by the Cygwin shell misinterpreting Windows line endings in the Node executable. Rerun the Cygwin installer, add the "dos2unix" package, then run:

<code sh>dos2unix "$(which npm)" "$(which npx)"</code>