Zed fails to build on Windows

[seb-hyland]

Summary

Zed is failing to build on Windows, as it claims to not find spectre-mitigated libs.

I'm trying to build Zed from source on Windows. My Visual Studio Build tools are configured to include the latest spectre-mitigated libs for x64/x86, VS 2022 as well as the ATL and MFC for latest v143 build tools with Spectre Mitigations. Visual Studio Build Tools 2022 > Export Configuration yields:

{
  "version": "1.0",
  "components": [
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Roslyn.Compiler",
    "Microsoft.Component.MSBuild",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.CoreBuildTools",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.MSBuildTools",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CoreBuildTools",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Redist.14.Latest",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows11SDK.22621",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CMake.Project",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.TestTools.BuildTools",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.ASAN",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.TextTemplating",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CoreIde",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.ComponentGroup.NativeDesktop.Core",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Llvm.ClangToolset",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Llvm.Clang",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows11SDK.26100",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.ATL.Spectre",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.ATLMFC.Spectre",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Runtimes.x86.x64.Spectre",
    "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.14.43.17.13.x86.x64"
  ],
  "extensions": []
}

Running cargo build --release ends up with msvc_spectre_libs failing, with the following output:

warning: [email protected]: No spectre-mitigated libs were found. Please modify the VS Installation to add these.
error: failed to run custom build command for `msvc_spectre_libs v0.1.3`

Caused by:
  process didn't exit successfully: `C:\Users\<username>\Downloads\zed-main\zed-main\target\release\build\msvc_spectre_libs-12b1da0a30af26a6\build-script-build` (exit code: 101)
  --- stdout
  cargo:warning=No spectre-mitigated libs were found. Please modify the VS Installation to add these.

  --- stderr

  thread 'main' panicked at C:\Users\<username>\.cargo\registry\src\index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f\msvc_spectre_libs-0.1.3\build.rs:38:13:
  No spectre-mitigated libs were found. Please modify the VS Installation to add these.
  note: run with `RUST_BACKTRACE=1` environment variable to display a backtrace
warning: build failed, waiting for other jobs to finish...

I'm not sure why this is occurring given the libs are installed and present on the system.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Pull latest Zed commit from origin
2. Set up Visual Studio build tools on Windows
3. cd into Zed dir and cargo build --release

Expected Behavior: builds successfully
Actual Behavior: fails with above error

Zed Version and System Specs

Zed: v0.181.5 (Zed)
OS: Windows 10.0.22631
Memory: 31.9 GiB
Architecture: x86_64
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6800 || AMD proprietary driver || 24.12.1 (AMD proprietary shader compiler)

^^ this is taken from MSYS2 build

[seb-hyland]

I fixed it; for some reason I need to install the preview build of VS Build Tools. I guess a version mismatch with the Rust crate? Seems odd that it doesn't recognize stable.

[Hougaard22]

I had the same issue, fixed it by installing MSCV v143 - VS 2022 C++ x64/x86 Spectre-mitigated libs (latest) via the Visual Studio Installer

[JoelHobson]

I thought I had done this and was still getting the error from above. Here's what was going on.

When I launched the visual studio installer, I had two 'modify' buttons available to me, one for Visual Studio Build Tools 2022, and another one for Visual Studio Community 2022. I'd been installing the spectre-mitigated libs by clicking the modify button next to 'build tools'. When I installed it by going through modify->individual components for Visual Studio Community 2022, the build was able to continue.

I'm just dropping this here in case someone else runs into this problem someday.