Windows doesn't have a built-in "make" environment, so as well as installing the toolchain you will need a GNU-compatible environment. We use the MSYS2_ environment to provide.
You don't need to use this environment all the time (you can use Eclipse_ or some other front-end), but it runs behind the scenes.
The quick setup is to download the Windows all-in-one toolchain & MSYS zip file from dl.espressif.com:
As an alternative to getting a pre-prepared environment, you can set up the environment from scratch:
* Navigate to the MSYS2_ installer page and download the ``msys2-i686-xxxxxxx.exe`` installer executable (we only support a 32-bit MSYS environment, it works on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows.)
* Run through the installer steps, and accept the "Run MSYS2 now" option at the end. A window will open with a MSYS2 terminal.
* The ESP-IDF repository on github contains a script in the tools directory titled ``windows_install_prerequisites.sh``. If you haven't downloaded the ESP-IDF yet, that's OK - you can just download that one file in Raw format from here: :idf_raw:`tools/windows/windows_install_prerequisites.sh`. Save it somewhere on your computer.
* Type the path to the shell script into the MSYS2 terminal window. You can type it as a normal Windows path, but use forward-slashes instead of back-slashes. ie: ``C:/Users/myuser/Downloads/windows_install_prerequisites.sh``. You can read the script beforehand to check what it does.
* If you use the 201602 MSYS2 installer, the first time you run ``windows_install_prerequisites.sh`` it will update the MSYS2 core system. At the end of this update, you will be prompted to close the MSYS2 terminal and re-open. When you re-open after the update, re-run ``windows_install_prerequisites.sh``. The next version of MSYS2 (after 201602) will not need this interim step.
Note: You may encounter a bug where svchost.exe uses 100% CPU in Windows after setup is finished, resulting in the ESP-IDF building very slowly. Terminating svchost.exe or restarting Windows will solve this problem.
If you followed one of the above options for Step 1, you won't need this download.
Important: Just having this toolchain is *not enough* to use ESP-IDF on Windows. You will need GNU make, bash, and sed at minimum. The above environments provide all this, plus a host compiler (required for menuconfig support).
Change to the directory you want to clone the SDK into by typing a command like this one: ``cd "C:/path/to/dir"`` (note the forward-slashes in the path). Then type ``git clone --recursive https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf.git``
*NOTE*: While cloning submodules, the ``git clone`` command may print some output starting ``': not a valid identifier...``. This is a `known issue`_ but the git clone still succeeds without any problems.
ESP-IDF by itself does not build a binary to run on the ESP32. The binary "app" comes from a project in a different directory. Multiple projects can share the same ESP-IDF directory on your computer.
The process is the same as for checking out the ESP-IDF from github. Change to the parent directory and run ``git clone https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf-template.git``.
Type a command like this to set the path to ESP-IDF directory: ``export IDF_PATH="C:/path/to/esp-idf"`` (note the forward-slashes not back-slashes for the path). If you don't want to run this command every time you open an MSYS2 window, create a new file in ``C:/msys32/etc/profile.d/`` and paste this line in - then it will be run each time you open an MYS2 terminal.
Use ``cd`` to change to the project directory (not the ESP-IDF directory.) Type ``make menuconfig`` to configure your project, then ``make`` to build it, ``make clean`` to remove built files, and ``make flash`` to flash (use the menuconfig to set the serial port for flashing.)
