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Building Dalamud

tip

This guide covers building Dalamud from source, and is intended for people who are making changes to Dalamud itself.

If you're just looking to create plugins, you don't need to follow this guide! You can skip this section and head over to the Plugin Development section.

Dalamud is built using Nuke, a code-first build system for C#/.NET projects. This guide will walk you through setting up your development environment and building Dalamud.

Prerequisites​

  • Windows 10/Windows Server 2016 or higher
  • Visual Studio 2022
    • Both the "Desktop Development with C++" and "Desktop Development with .NET" workloads are required.
  • .NET 8.0 SDK
    • This is included with Visual Studio 2022, but you can also install it separately if desired.
  • Git

Getting the Source​

Dalamud's source code is hosted on GitHub. You can clone the repository using the following command:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/goatcorp/Dalamud.git
info

Dalamud has several Git submodules. If you don't clone the repository with the --recursive flag, you'll need to initialize the submodules manually using the following command:

git submodule update --init --recursive

You can also use this command later to update the submodules in your local repository.

Building​

In PowerShell, navigate to the root of the repository and run the following command:

.\build.ps1

This will build the Nuke project and run the default target, which will build Dalamud and all of its components (including the injector).

tip

You can also likely build Dalamud using MSBuild or your IDE's build system directly. However, CI builds use Nuke, so if you run into any issues, you should try building using Nuke to rule out build system issues.

info

Building on other operating systems is not supported at this time, due to native components (such as the injector) that rely on Windows APIs.

However, you may succeed with a partial build on Linux/macOS by using ./build.sh instead of .\build.ps1, or by building the Dalamud project directly with dotnet build.

Running​

danger

If you use these instructions to bypass the disabling of Dalamud after game patches, you are on your own!

We disable Dalamud on every patch until it is verified to work in a somewhat stable and safe manner. If you choose to ignore this, you will experience crashes and other issues, and we will not help you.

Once again: manual injection of Dalamud into a running game is for developers only! If you want to help us test Dalamud and plugins after a patch, please join the Discord and pick up the tester role. We will ping you when we need help.

The build process will output the injector to bin\Debug\Dalamud.Injector.exe. For testing purposes, you can use this injector in a few different ways.

Fake Launch​

If you want to test Dalamud without fully logging into the game, you can use the "fake launch" feature of the injector. This will launch the game, but without any authentication, so you won't be able to go any further than the title screen.

To use this feature, you should ensure the game is not running, then run the injector with the following arguments:

.\Dalamud.Injector.exe launch -f
warning

If your game is installed in a non-standard location, you must use the -g argument to pass the full path to ffxiv_dx11.exe, e.g.:

.\Dalamud.Injector.exe launch -f -g "D:\dev\ffxiv\game-root\game\ffxiv_dx11.exe"

Manual Injection​

To test Dalamud fully, you'll need to inject it into a running game. To do this, you will need to ensure that you start the game in a method that disables its ACL protections. Launching through the official launcher will not allow you to inject Dalamud.

XIVLauncher is the recommended method for this, as it will automatically disable the ACL protections for you. Simply launch the game through XIVLauncher, making sure to disable Dalamud injection, using one of the following options:

  • Right-click the "Log in" button, and select "Start w/o Dalamud". preview
  • Disable Dalamud in the XIVLauncher settings. preview

Once the game is running, you can run the injector with the following arguments:

.\Dalamud.Injector.exe inject -a

Dalamud should now be injected into the game. You can verify this by looking for the Dalamud logo in the top-left corner of the screen (assuming you haven't yet logged in).

tip

You can invoke the injector with help to see all available arguments:

.\Dalamud.Injector.exe help

Most of the extra arguments will not be helpful, but they are lightly documented in the help output for completeness.