Building from source

If you want to compile RPFM yourself — to contribute, to enable optional features, or to run the latest develop — these are the per-platform instructions.

Windows

You’ll need:

Windows SDK.
Visual Studio Community 2022 with the MSVC C++ build tools workload.
Rust 1.81 (or newer) with the MSVC toolchain.
Craft from KDE.

Once Craft is installed, install RPFM’s KDE / Qt dependencies:

craft -i libs/qt6/qtimageformats
craft -i kimageformats
craft -i kwidgetsaddons
craft -i ktexteditor
craft -i kiconthemes
craft -i breeze-icons

By default Craft builds KDE Frameworks with -DBUILD_DESIGNERPLUGIN=OFF. RPFM uses .ui templates with KDE widgets (KLineEdit, KComboBox, KMessageWidget, …) that are loaded at runtime via QUiLoader. Without the designer plugins, QUiLoader cannot instantiate these widget types and RPFM crashes on startup.

Edit the Craft blueprint at CraftRoot/etc/blueprints/locations/craft-blueprints-kde/kde/frameworks/frameworks.py and change BUILD_DESIGNERPLUGIN=OFF to BUILD_DESIGNERPLUGIN=ON:

self.subinfo.options.configure.args += [
    "-DBUILD_DESIGNERPLUGIN=ON",
    "-DBUILD_PYTHON_BINDINGS=OFF",
]

Then rebuild the relevant frameworks:

craft --fetch --unpack --configure --compile --install --qmerge kcompletion
craft --fetch --unpack --configure --compile --install --qmerge kwidgetsaddons

You should see kcompletion6widgets.dll and kwidgetsaddons6widgets.dll in CraftRoot/plugins/designer/.

Building

Open Craft’s terminal, move to RPFM’s source folder and run:

# Debug build:
cargo build

# Run rpfm_ui in debug mode (auto-builds rpfm_server first):
cargo run --bin rpfm_ui

# Release build:
cargo build --release

You can make any editor inherit Craft’s environment (and so be able to compile RPFM) by launching it from Craft’s terminal.

Linux

You’ll need:

CMake.
Rust 1.81 (or newer).
Qt6.
KDE Frameworks 6: KCompletion, KIconThemes, KTextEditor, KXmlGui, KWidgetsAddons.
xz, p7zip.

Then from the repo root:

# Debug build:
cargo build

# Run rpfm_ui in debug mode:
cargo run --bin rpfm_ui

# Release build:
cargo build --release

macOS

There’s no maintained macOS build. The qt_* Qt6 bindings RPFM uses build on macOS in principle, but nobody is currently producing or testing macOS builds. Contributions welcome.

Feature flags

Some features are gated behind cargo feature flags. Pass them with --features:

cargo run --bin rpfm_ui --features "enable_tools,support_uic"

Available flags (the up-to-date list lives in each crate’s Cargo.toml):

Flag	Default	What it enables
`enable_tools`	yes	Compiles the integrated Tools menu (Translator, Faction Painter, Unit Editor).
`support_model_renderer`	no	3D RigidModel preview. Requires the renderer library on the link path.
`support_uic`	no	Propagates UIC parsing support through `rpfm_lib`.
`strict_subclasses_compilation`	no	Forces a compilation failure if `qt_rpfm_subclasses` fails to build.
`only_for_the_brave`	no	Exposes experimental features in the About dialog.

Building the manual

To build this manual locally:

# Install mdbook + the langtabs preprocessor RPFM uses:
cargo install --locked mdbook mdbook-langtabs

# Build the docs and open them in a browser:
mdbook build --open

To build the full site (landing page + manual + cargo doc API reference), use the orchestration script in the repo root:

./build_site.sh                # full build
./build_site.sh --skip-api     # manual + landing only
./build_site.sh --skip-manual  # landing + API only

# Preview locally:
python3 -m http.server -d out 8000

Troubleshooting

Missing dll errors on Windows — You’re either not launching everything from Craft’s terminal, or you’re missing dependencies.

For anything else, the issue tracker is the right place.

Rusted PackFile Manager Documentation