Building MAME for Windows

Install the MSYS2 environment

Default install folder is c:\MSYS64

Start "MSYS2 MINGW64"

Update installation:

pacman -S --noconfirm --refresh --sysupgrade

MSYS2 may close afterwards. If so, re-open MSYS2 and run this again.

Exclude MSYS2 from virus scans (optional)

This will speed up compilation, but it optional, as it adds risk!

Open elevated PowerShell prompt and run:

Add-MpPreference -ExclusionPath 'C:\MSYS2'

Download and install mame-essentials package

mkdir ~/tmp && cd ~/tmp
curl -O 'https://repo.mamedev.org/x86_64/mame-essentials-1.0.6-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz'
pacman -U --noconfirm  mame-essentials-1.0.6-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

Add the mame package repository to pacman

echo -e '\n[mame]\nInclude = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.mame\nSigLevel = Never' >> /etc/pacman.conf

Update mame packages

pacman -S --noconfirm --refresh --sysupgrade

Install packages necessary to build MAME

pacman -S --noconfirm git make unzip mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc mingw-w64-x86_64-libc++ mingw-w64-x86_64-python

Put MINGW64 and MINGW32 environment variables in ~/.bashrc, and refresh

echo "export MINGW64=/mingw64 MINGW32=" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Clone MAME sources

git clone https://github.com/mamedev/mame.git

Build MAME (REGENIE=1 will regenerate settings in the makefile)

cd mame
make --jobs=4 PTR64=1 OPTIMIZE=3 SYMBOLS=1 SYMLEVEL=1 STRIP_SYMBOLS=1

Verify build

Binaries will be in C:\MSYS64\home(username)\tmp\mame - mame.exe

Run mame.exe and yhou should see a version with a long identifier, e.g. "mame0277-416-geccbb3d77c8":

.\mame.exe -version
0.277 (mame0277-416-geccbb3d77c8)

while an official release would look like this:

.\mame.exe -version
0.277 (mame0277)

Update MAME

git pull
make clean

milnak/mame-windows-build.md