Building EG-Overlay From Source

Building EG-Overlay From Source#

Most users should use pre-built binaries, but EG-Overlay can be built from source for development or debugging purposes.

Visual Studio#

While EG-Overlay is written in Rust, it still requires the MSVC compiler. The most straightforward way to install a functional compiler toolchain with the required dependencies is to install Microsoft Visual Studio.

Note

The Visual Studio IDE itself does not need to be used to build EG-Overlay, but installing it is the easiest way to get all needed components installed. In fact, the author of EG-Overlay uses Neovim and command line tools for development.

It may be possible to use Build Tools for Visual Studio instead, but that is outside the scope of this documentation.

Install Visual Studio 2022 Community from https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/.

During installation select the ‘Desktop development with C++’ workload.

Rust#

Rust can be installed with rustup from https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install.

Default options should be sufficient.

Meson and Ninja#

While the Rust portion of EG-Overlay begrudgingly uses Cargo, the non-Rust dependencies are built with the Meson Build system and Ninja. Install both by using the Meson and Ninja MSI Installer.

Sources#

Download the EG-Overlay sources from https://code.the-eg.net/The-EG/EG-Overlay.

Alternatively, git can be used to clone the repository:

PS > git clone https://code.the-eg.net/The-EG/EG-Overlay.git

Command Line Build#

EG-Overlay can be built from the command line using PowerShell.

  1. Open Developer PowerShell For VS 2022 from the start menu.

  2. Navigate to the sources downloaded above.

  3. Run cargo build

    Note

    By default a debug build is configured.

    You can request a release build by adding --release to step #3 above.

    For example cargo build --release.

At this point, EG-Overlay is in the target/[build-type] folder.

Note

While the above build is appropriate for debugging, it can not be easily run for production use. Users may find running the scripts/build-release.ps1 script more convenient. That will build a release, with all files located in release/EG-Overlay.

Debugging#

CDB#

CDB is Microsoft’s command line debugger. It is quite powerful, but has a steep learning curve; however it is useful for ‘light’ debugging.

CDB can be installed as part of ‘Debugging Tools for Windows’ in the Windows SDK. See ‘As a standalone toolset’ at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/debugger-download-tools for details.

The included scripts\debug.ps1 will start CDB as long as it is installed in the default location.

scripts\debug.ps1 can be given arguments that control how EG-Overlay is run:

  • terminal : Overlay Windows Terminal instead of GuildWars 2

  • notepad : Overlay Notepad instead of GuildWars 2

For example, to run EG-Overlay in the debugger and overlay Notepad instead of GW2: PS > .\scripts\debug.ps1 notepad

WinDbgX#

WinDbg is a friendly UI built on top of CDB. All of the commands from CDB work inside of WinDbg, however most tasks can also be performed through the UI as well. WinDbgx is an updated version that is available in the Windows App Store.

WinDbgX can be installed directly from the Windows App Store (it is called WinDbg) at https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9pgjgd53tn86?launch=true&mode=mini&hl=en-us&gl=US.

The script scripts\start-windbgx.ps1 will start a debugging session in WinDbgx and takes the same options as scripts\debug.ps1 described above.

Contents