How to build the toolset from source
Building the toolset from source code is very easy using Visual Studio. You don't have to be a programmer to know how to build the project from source. You might want to build the project from source to learn how the inside of the toolset works, to see if you can trigger an issue and give us a more detailed report of an issue, or to get access to the absolute latest features.
You will need Visual Studio 2019 version 16.3 or newer to build the project. Older versions will not work. Community Edition is free and can be downloaded below: Download Visual Studio (Community)
You will also need the .NET Framework 4.8 Developer Pack. This will allow you to build the software. You can download the developer pack from the SDK download page. From this page you can also download and install .NET Framework 4.8 Runtime, if you don't already have that installed - Windows 10 1903 and up will have it already installed.
Running the installer will allow you to choose several options. Ensure you select at least the C# .NET development and C++ development options.
You may also want to install the GitHub Extension for Visual Studio, which is really useful, especially if you want to contribute. You can find it on the Individual components page.
Once you have installed Visual Studio, you may need a restart. Choose Dark theme when it asks.
You are now ready to import the code and build the project. Go to the repository and go to Clone or Download, and then select Open in Visual Studio.
Once Visual studio opens up, the Team Explorer panel will open. This panel is how you will fetch the latest code from within Visual Studio. In this panel, you will see a Clone button appear under Local Git Repositories.
Select where you want the project to be placed, and then click Clone. It will download the git repository to your system.
Once the repository has downloaded, Visual Studio will open the directory for the project. You need to load the .sln file, which is the Solution file. The solution file contains all of the information about a set of projects. Double click ME3Explorer.sln.
The project will load. It may take some time.
We have to keep AnyCPU configuration around for designing some of the older Winforms windows. Decompressing will not work in AnyCPU, so change it to x64 and leave it there.
Select the Start button next to the project name at the top, and the project will build and run.
While running within Visual Studio, exceptions may cause the program to pause. You can press Continue when this occurs. In non-visual studio run instances, the application will not pause.
To get the latest code once you've built the project (and we commit further code), you will need to do a pull. Go to Team Explorer and select Sync from the dropdown.
You then click Pull, and our latest code changes will download into your local repository. When you run the app again, it will rebuild against the latest codebase.
Ensure you are on the Beta branch, or whatever branch you want to build against, some features are built on different branches. You can find them under the Branches item in the dropdown, and then under remotes/origins.
