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Standard Setup of Toolchain for Windows
***************************************

Introduction
============

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 this. You don't need to use this environment all the time (you can use :doc:`Eclipse <eclipse-setup>` or some other front-end), but it runs behind the scenes.


Toolchain Setup 
===============

The quick setup is to download the Windows all-in-one toolchain & MSYS2 zip file from dl.espressif.com:

https://dl.espressif.com/dl/esp32_win32_msys2_environment_and_toolchain-20181001.zip

Unzip the zip file to ``C:\`` (or some other location, but this guide assumes ``C:\``) and it will create an ``msys32`` directory with a pre-prepared environment.

Download the toolchain for the ESP8266
--------------------------------------

v8.4.0

    https://dl.espressif.com/dl/xtensa-lx106-elf-gcc8_4_0-esp-2020r3-win32.zip

If you are still using old version SDK(< 3.0), please use toolchain v4.8.5, as following:

    https://dl.espressif.com/dl/xtensa-lx106-elf-win32-1.22.0-88-gde0bdc1-4.8.5.tar.gz


Check it Out
============

Open a MSYS2 MINGW32 terminal window by running ``C:\msys32\mingw32.exe``. The environment in this window is a bash shell. Create a directory named ``esp`` that is a default location to develop ESP8266 applications. To do so, run the following shell command::

    mkdir -p ~/esp

By typing ``cd ~/esp`` you can then move to the newly created directory. If there are no error messages you are done with this step.

.. figure:: ../../_static/msys2-terminal-window.png
    :align: center
    :alt: MSYS2 MINGW32 shell window
    :figclass: align-center

    MSYS2 MINGW32 shell window

Use this window in the following steps setting up development environment for ESP8266.


Next Steps
==========

To carry on with development environment setup, proceed to section :ref:`get-started-get-esp-idf`.


Related Documents
=================


.. _MSYS2: https://msys2.github.io/