Installation on Microsoft Windows

Installation with the installer

The recommended way to install Siril is to use the provided installer which will guide you step by step.

installer_start

First screen of the installer, you need to accept the agreement to continue.

installer_end

Last screen of the installer. You can chose to start Siril right after installation, and to open the tutorial explaining the first steps.

The Siril setup wizard will install all the necessary files in the right place and at the end you will have the choice to create or not a shortcut on the desktop.

Note

Siril will be installed in C:\Program Files\Siril. If you don't have the rights to install to this folder, use a portable version instead (see Installation of the portable binary.)

Installation of the portable binary

If you want to use Siril without installing all kinds of files on your computer (for example if you don't have administrator permissions on the machine), then it is recommended to use the portable version. It comes in the form of a zip file, which you just have to extract to the location of your choice, then go to the bin folder to run siril.exe. You can also create a shortcut on your desktop to make it easier to launch the application.

Warning

Be careful, under no circumstances you should move the exe file, or any other file. Otherwise Siril will not run.

Building on Windows with Msys2

These instructions are made for compiling on Windows with MSYS2 distribution using MinGW. MSYS2 requires 64 bit Windows 8.1 or newer, and does not work with FAT filesystems.

Download MSYS2 64bit, a software distribution and building platform for Windows and run the installer x86_64 for 64-bit. When asked, specify the directory where MSYS2 64-bit will be installed.

Run MSYS2 directly from the installer or later mingw64-logo MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit from Start menu or shortcut.

Warning

Make sure to launch MinGW 64-bit (check that the icon is blue at the top of the terminal window).

First, update the package database and core system packages by typing (for more info about pacman see this page):

pacman -Syu

Installing dependencies

To install the dependencies, enter the following command:

pacman -S --noconfirm  --needed \
base-devel \
mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain \
mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake \
git \
automake \
mingw-w64-x86_64-autotools \
mingw-w64-x86_64-meson \
mingw-w64-x86_64-ninja \
mingw-w64-x86_64-glib2 \
mingw-w64-x86_64-gtk3 \
mingw-w64-x86_64-gtksourceview4 \
mingw-w64-x86_64-gsl \
mingw-w64-x86_64-lcms2 \
mingw-w64-x86_64-fftw \
mingw-w64-x86_64-cfitsio \
mingw-w64-x86_64-opencv \
mingw-w64-x86_64-cairo \
mingw-w64-x86_64-exiv2 \
mingw-w64-x86_64-libraw \
mingw-w64-x86_64-libtiff \
mingw-w64-x86_64-libjpeg-turbo \
mingw-w64-x86_64-libjxl \
mingw-w64-x86_64-libpng \
mingw-w64-x86_64-libheif \
mingw-w64-x86_64-libxisf \
mingw-w64-x86_64-libgit2-winhttp \
mingw-w64-x86_64-ffmpeg \
mingw-w64-x86_64-ffms2 \
mingw-w64-x86_64-curl

Building from source

The source code is stored on a gitlab repository, you can download it with this command the first time:

git clone https://gitlab.com/free-astro/siril.git
cd siril
git submodule update --init

Now, generate the build system and compile the code by typing:

meson setup _build --buildtype release
ninja -C _build install

To launch your build of Siril, run MSYS2 64-bit and type siril's command name:

siril

You can also create a shortcut to siril.exe to start it, the default location is C:\mingw64\bin\.

To update your version, run MSYS2 64-bit then:

pacman -Syu
cd siril
git pull --recurse-submodules
meson setup _build --reconfigure
ninja -C _build && ninja -C _build install

If git pull does not show any change, there is no need to rebuild by running the make command. Otherwise, it will update your build.

After that just launch the build by typing:

siril

Warning

Starting with Siril 1.3.6, you will need to have Python installed in your system if you build from sources. The first time you launch a self-built Siril, you will need to do it from a Windows environment, not msys2/ming64, in order to detect Windows Python instead of msys2 Python (you will get a notification in the console if you don't and sirilpy module will not be initialised). This is just a one-time trick. Once the venv is set, you can go back to starting siril from msys2 terminal as usual.

To launch siril in Windows environment, you can either start a terminal and launch C:\mingw64\bin\siril.exe or locate this file and double-click on it.