Stream: brlcad

Topic: Issue building BRL-CAD on Windows using Visual Studio

Shorya Singhal (Feb 12 2026 at 15:24):

I’m trying to build BRL-CAD on Windows using Visual Studio, but I’m encountering an issue related to the bext dependency repository.

Environment

• Windows 11(64-bit)

Visual Studio 2019 (also tried 2026)

Generator: Visual Studio 16 2019

Build type: Release

cmake .. -DBRLCAD_ENABLE_STRICT=NO -DBRLCAD_BUNDLED_LIBS=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G "Visual Studio 16 2019"

Error Encountered

CMake Error at misc/CMake/BRLCAD_Util.cmake:102 (_message):
  Unable to successfully build bext dependency repository
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  misc/CMake/BRLCAD_EXT_Setup.cmake:442 (message)
  misc/CMake/BRLCAD_ExternalDeps.cmake:529 (brlcad_ext_setup)
  CMakeLists.txt:2114 (brlcad_bext_process)

Daniel Rossberg (Feb 13 2026 at 07:48):

Hmm, can you build bext separately?

Shorya Singhal (Feb 13 2026 at 15:45):

I just did that. It is compiling separately.
I followed the commands given in the bext repository and it worked.

Shorya Singhal (Feb 13 2026 at 15:52):

I think in brlcad it is failing just at the last moment of building bext because after completion of building bext separately I found that during generation of build files it's last output is

  Building Custom Rule D:/brlcad/build/bext/stepcode/CMakeLists.txt

and when I am generating build files for brlcad it gives the previous error just after this output.

Last updated: Feb 18 2026 at 01:15 UTC