"Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.TextTemplating",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CoreIde",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.ComponentGroup.NativeDesktop.Core",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Runtimes.x86.x64.Spectre"
  ],
  "extensions": []
}
```

The list can be obtained as follows:

- Open the Visual Studio Installer
- Click on `More` in the `Installed` tab
- Click on `Export configuration`

## Backend dependencies

> This section is still in development. The instructions are not yet complete.

If you are developing collaborative features of Zed, you'll need to install the dependencies of zed's `collab` server:

- Install [Postgres](https://www.postgresql.org/download/windows/)
- Install [Livekit](https://github.com/livekit/livekit), optionally you can add the `livekit-server` binary to your `PATH`.

Alternatively, if you have [Docker](https://www.docker.com/) installed you can bring up all the `collab` dependencies using Docker Compose:

```sh
docker compose up -d
```

### Notes

You should modify the `pg_hba.conf` file in the `data` directory to use `trust` instead of `scram-sha-256` for the `host` method. Otherwise, the connection will fail with the error `password authentication failed`. The `pg_hba.conf` file typically locates at `C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\17\data\pg_hba.conf`. After the modification, the file should look like this:

```conf
# IPv4 local connections:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            trust
# IPv6 local connections:
host    all             all             ::1/128                 trust
```

Also, if you are using a non-latin Windows version, you must modify the`lc_messages` parameter in the `postgresql.conf` file in the `data` directory to `English_United States.1252` (or whatever UTF8-compatible encoding you have). Otherwise, the database will panic. The `postgresql.conf` file should look like this:

```conf
# lc_messages = 'Chinese (Simplified)_China.936' # locale for system error message strings
lc_messages = 'English_United States.1252'
```

After this, you should restart the `postgresql` service. Press the `win` key + `R` to launch the `Run` window. Type the `services.msc` and hit the `OK` button to open the Services Manager. Then, find the `postgresql-x64-XX` service, right-click on it, and select `Restart`.

## Building from source

Once you have the dependencies installed, you can build Zed using [Cargo](https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/).

For a debug build:

```sh
cargo run
```

For a release build:

```sh
cargo run --release
```

And to run the tests:

```sh
cargo test --workspace
```

## Installing from msys2

[MSYS2](https://msys2.org/) distribution provides Zed as a package [mingw-w64-zed](https://packages.msys2.org/base/mingw-w64-zed). The package is available for UCRT64, MINGW64 and CLANG64 repositories. To download it, run

```sh
pacman -Syu
pacman -S $MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX-zed
```

then you can run `zeditor` CLI. Editor executable is installed under `$MINGW_PREFIX/lib/zed` directory

You can see the [build script](https://github.com/msys2/MINGW-packages/blob/master/mingw-w64-zed/PKGBUILD) for more details on build process.

> Please, report any issue in [msys2/MINGW-packages/issues](https://github.com/msys2/MINGW-packages/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+zed) first.

Note that `collab` is not supported for MSYS2.

## Troubleshooting

### Setting `RUSTFLAGS` env var breaks builds

If you set the `RUSTFLAGS` env var, it will override the `rustflags` settings in `.cargo/config.toml` which is required to properly build Zed.

Since these settings can vary from time to time, the build errors you receive may vary from linker errors, to other stranger errors.

If you'd like to add extra rust flags, you may do 1 of the following in `.cargo/config.toml`:

Add your flags in the build section