As the Oslandia team work exclusively on GNU/Linux, the exercise of compiling QGIS 3 on Windows 8 is not an everyday’s task :). So we decided to share our experience, we bet that will help some of you.

Cygwin

The first step is to download Cygwin and to install it in the directory C:\cygwin (instead of the default C:\cygwin64). During the installation, select the lynx package:

Once installed, you have to click on the Cygwin64 Terminal icon newly created on your desktop:

Then, we’re able to install dependencies and download some other installers:

$ cd /cygdrive/c/Users/henri/Downloads
$ lynx -source rawgit.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg/master/apt-cyg > apt-cyg
$ install apt-cyg /bin
$ apt-cyg install wget git flex bison
$ wget http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/2/3/D23F4D0F-BA2D-4600-8725-6CCECEA05196/vs_community_ENU.exe
$ chmod u+x vs_community_ENU.exe
$ wget https://cmake.org/files/v3.7/cmake-3.7.2-win64-x64.msi
$ wget http://download.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/osgeo4w-setup-x86_64.exe
$ chmod u+x osgeo4w-setup-x86_64.exe

CMake

The next step is to install CMake. To do that, double clic on the file cmake-3.7.2-win64-x64.msi previously downloaded with wget. You should choose the next options during the installation:

Visual Studio

Then, we have to install Visual Studio and C++ tools. Double click on the vs_community_ENU.exe file and select the Custom installation. On the next page, you have to select Visual C++ chekbox:

OSGeo4W

In order to compile QGIS, some dependencies provided by the OSGeo4W installer are required. Double click on osgeo4w-setup-x86_64.exe and select the Advanced Install mode. Then, select the next packages:

expat
fcgi
gdal
grass
gsl-devel
iconv
libzip-devel
libspatialindex-devel
pyqt5
python3-devel
python3-qscintilla
python3-nose2
python3-future
python3-pyyaml
python3-mock
python3-six
qca-qt5-devel
qca-qt5-libs
qscintilla-qt5
qt5-devel
qt5-libs-debug
qtwebkit-qt5-devel
qtwebkit-qt5-libs-debug
qwt-devel-qt5
sip-qt5
spatialite
oci
qtkeychain

QGIS

To start this last step, we have to create a file C:\OSGeo4W\OSGeo4W-dev.bat containing something like:

@echo off 
set OSGEO4W_ROOT=C:\OSGeo4W64
call "%OSGEO4W_ROOT%\bin\o4w_env.bat" 
call "%OSGEO4W_ROOT%\bin\qt5_env.bat" 
call "%OSGEO4W_ROOT%\bin\py3_env.bat" 
set VS140COMNTOOLS=%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\Tools\ 
call "%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat" amd64 
set INCLUDE=%INCLUDE%;%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1A\include 
set LIB=%LIB%;%PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1A\lib 
path %PATH%;%PROGRAMFILES%\CMake\bin;c:\cygwin\bin 
@set GRASS_PREFIX="%OSGEO4W_ROOT%\apps\grass\grass-7.2.1 
@set INCLUDE=%INCLUDE%;%OSGEO4W_ROOT%\include 
@set LIB=%LIB%;%OSGEO4W_ROOT%\lib;%OSGEO4W_ROOT%\lib 

@cmd

According to your environment, some variables should probably be adapted. Then in the Cygwin terminal:

$ cd C:\
$ git clone git://github.com/qgis/QGIS.git
$ ./OSGeo4W-dev.bat
> cd QGIS/ms-windows/osgeo4w

In this directory, you have to edit the file package-nightly.cmd to replace:

cmake -G Ninja ^

by:

cmake -G "Visual Studio 14 2015 Win64" ^

Moreover, we had to update the environment variable SETUAPI_LIBRARY according to the current position of the Windows Kits file SetupAPI.Lib:

set SETUPAPI_LIBRARY=C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\Lib\winv6.3\um\x64\SetupAPI.Lib

And finally, we just have to compile with the next command:

> package-nightly.cmd 2.99.0 1 qgis-dev x86_64

Victory!

And see you soon for the generation of OSGEO4W packages 😉

Source

https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/blob/ab859c9bdf8a529df9805ff54e7250921a74d877/doc/msvc.t2t

QGIS 3 compiling on Windows