Required C++ Tools
To be able to use the Geode SDK, you will need at least the following:
- A C++ compiler
- CMake - Version 3.21+ is required, and make sure to add to PATH when installing on windows.
- git - Hey you. yes you. I know a lot of people skip this but you will need it. Don’t come at us asking for why “could not find git for clone of json-populate”
Compiler
To use the Geode SDK, and in turn make Geometry Dash mods, you will need either:
- Visual Studio 2022+ on Windows
- clang on MacOS
- A secret third thing on Linux
Windows
From the Visual Studio website, you can download the Visual Studio IDE along with the compiler. If you want just the compiler, look for Build Tools for Visual Studio further down in the page.
After launching the installer, look for Desktop development with C++. You may choose other features, but you will need at least MSVC and Windows SDK installed.
Once its installed, you should now have a working C++ compiler installed that is suited for GD mod development.
Please note that Visual Studio 2022 or higher is required. 2019 or lower will not work, as they don’t support C++20 properly.
MacOS
Install brew if you don’t already have it, and then run:
brew install llvm
Linux
Linux is a bit more complicated, as obviously there’s no linux release of GD (yet). Of course, you can run the Windows version of GD through software like wine quite well, which is probably what you’re already doing.
Because of that, this guide will set you up to cross-compile windows Geode mods from linux.
First, besides git and cmake, make sure you have clang and lld installed.
On Ubuntu:
apt install clang-17 clang-tools-17 lld-17
On Arch-based systems:
pacman -S clang lld
The next step will install the Windows SDK and a CMake toolchain. For ease of installation, first install Geode CLI and then come back here. If you want to do it manually, you can follow this guide.
After installing the CLI, run this command to install all the needed tools:
geode sdk install-linux
Now you can proceed to setting up the SDK.