Building from source code MonoGame 3.7.1

Hello, I am trying to build Monogame from source code and it seems the documentation is outdated.

I followed the steps:

git clone https://github.com/MonoGame/MonoGame.git
cd MonoGame
git submodule init
git submodule update

I can’t find protobuild.exe it seems that it’s been removed in the last version. Also there is no Build.ps1 file either. The solutions are missing references.

Should I get an older version or is there an updated doc about how to successfully build from source code?
Thanks.

Hey there,

The repository is going under heavy maintenance to prepare the future of MonoGame.

Right now building from source is undocumented. It is being worked on.

Protobuild has been deprecated and MonoGame no longer relies on it.
The build is now automated by a Cake script. You will need to install Cake. The smoothest route is to install it as a global dotnet tool (i.e. dotnet tool install --global Cake.Tool), it will then permanently be available.

Then building MonoGame is done with dotnet cake within the repository’s root.

Note that you will need .Net Core 3.1 to build the latest source (or Visual Studio 2019 16.4 with the .Net Core component).

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If you only need the runtime, you can find the .csproj file for each platform in the MonoGame.Framework folder. DesktopGL and WindowsDX can be built with .NET CLI (dotnet build). The others require a full MSBuild installation and can be built with VS or using msbuild from a command line (if it’s added to PATH or if you’re in a VS dev console).

Well I am getting this error now (I’ve installed VS 2019 with the .net core component):

I don’t know if this helps, didn’t try this myself but I would try different CLIs also and check if this makes a difference. Powershell or CMD or cmder? Maybe you already did?