Usage

To build from source you have two choices.

Automatic (mostly):

• download bootstrap.ps1 and run as a powershell script
  • in the dialog that shows up, select a build directory (should be a clean/new one)
  • this script will try to download and install all dependencies, then check out and build vortex
  • the dependencies are not installed headless so you have to click through the dialogs but it's only guaranteed to work if you keep the defaults

Manual:

• Before you can build vortex you need to download and install a couple of dependencies. If any of the download links is no longer valid, try google or a search engine of your choice.
  • node.js
    • download installer from https://nodejs.org and run
    • version doesn't matter much, latest lts should be fine
  • yarn
    • install through npm "npm install --global yarn"
  • git
    • download installer (64-bit) from https://git-scm.com and run
    • default settings are fine
  • python
    • required for one of the build tools (node-gyp). At the time of writing versions 3.7-3.10 are known to work
    • download installer (64-bit) from https://www.python.org/downloads/ and run
    • make sure to have it added to PATH, otherwise defaults are fine. You can disable samples and documentation if you want
  • visual c++ build tools 2022 or visual studio 2022 (community edition)
    • https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/de/downloads/ (You may have to google around for this as Microsoft tends to change their site layout all the bloody time)
    • In the installer, make sure you enable the build tools themselves, the latest windows SDK (version doesn't actually matter) and ATL headers, everything else is optional
  • Call "yarn config set msvs_version 2022 --global"
    • This sets up yarn to use the c++ build tools we just installed, you probably only need to do this if you've also installed other versions of Visual Studio. Can't hurt though
• Check out the repository
  • create and cd to an appropriate directory (i.e. c:\projects)
  • git clone https://github.com/Nexus-Mods/Vortex.git vortex
    • this creates a new directory vortex below the current working directory
  • cd vortex
• Switch to the appropriate branch if necessary
  • git checkout somebranch
• For development
  • "yarn install" followed by "yarn run build" to build
  • "yarn run start" to run
• For production
  • The scripts (electron-builder-oneclick.json and electron-builder-advanced.json) are set up to require code signing with a certificate you don't have so change that
  • "yarn dist" to build (this will take a while)
  • Find the installer and an alread unpacked version in dist

If something goes wrong:

The build tools are unfortunately not particularly robust, so the build may break for various reasons (i.e. network problems, dependencies that changed remotely, ...) and leave the checkout in an inconsistent state. In that case you will have to see if the error is something that needs to be fixed, then restart from the last step that failed.

The automatic variant will skip dependency download and install if the download was installed previously. If a dependency install failed for some reason or you cancelled it, you will have to manually install that package (see the downloads directory).

Further Information

• see structure.md for an overview of how the project is organized
• see https://nexus-mods.github.io/vortex-api for a description of the extension api
• see https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/Vortex for usage information
• run "yarn run doc" the create an html page from code documentation

Reporting bugs

Please report issues to the issue tracker on github. Please always include at the very least the following information:

• The exact version of Vortex you're using
• Your operating system
• What you were doing when the bug happened
• What exactly the bug is (crash? error messages? unexpected behaviour?)
• If you get any error message, include the full and exact error message. Do not paraphrase, do not leave out information that looks cryptic or unimportant to you
• The log file (see below)
• Ideally also the application state (see below)

All data the client generates (including settings and logs) are stored at

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Vortex (releases)

or

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\vortex_devel (development build)

If you need to report a bug, the following files inside that directory may be useful in addition to the error message displayed on screen:

• vortex.log (logs are rotated at a certain size, this is the latest one)
• state\* except global_account (that one contains keys and passwords so sensitive information)
• <game>\state* (if the bug pertains to a specific game)