New to FieldWorks development? Start here:

• Contributing Guide - How to set up your development environment and contribute code
• Visual Studio Setup - Detailed VS 2022 configuration
• Core Developer Setup - Additional setup for team members

Note: We are migrating documentation from the FwDocumentation wiki into this repository. Some wiki content may be more recent until migration is complete.

For first-time setup on a Windows development machine:

# Run as Administrator (or User for user-level PATH)
.\Setup-Developer-Machine.ps1

This configures a dev machine for builds and tests (verifies prerequisites and configures PATH). Prerequisites:

• Visual Studio 2022 with .NET desktop and C++ desktop workloads
• Git for Windows

Installer builds default to WiX 3 (legacy batch pipeline) using inputs in FLExInstaller/ and PatchableInstaller/. The Visual Studio WiX Toolset v3 extension is required so Wix.CA.targets is available under the MSBuild extensions path. Use -InstallerToolset Wix6 to opt into the WiX 6 SDK-style path (restored via NuGet).

We expect the WiX 3.14 toolset to be installed under:

• %LOCALAPPDATA%\FieldWorksTools\Wix314

Required:

• Ensure candle.exe, light.exe, heat.exe, and insignia.exe are available. The WiX 3.14 tools are in the root of that folder (not a bin subfolder).
• Set the WIX environment variable to the toolset root (e.g., %LOCALAPPDATA%\FieldWorksTools\Wix314).
• Add the toolset root to PATH (or rerun Setup-Developer-Machine.ps1 to do it for you).
• Install the Visual Studio WiX Toolset v3 extension so Wix.CA.targets is available to MSBuild.

FieldWorks uses the MSBuild Traversal SDK for declarative, dependency-ordered builds:

Windows (PowerShell):

.\build.ps1                    # Debug build
.\build.ps1 -Configuration Release

For detailed build instructions, see .github/instructions/build.instructions.md.

Installer builds include the additional utilities (UnicodeCharEditor, LCMBrowser, MigrateSqlDbs, etc.). To skip them, pass -BuildAdditionalApps:$false.

# Build the installer (Debug, WiX 3 default)
.\build.ps1 -BuildInstaller

# Build the installer (Debug, WiX 6)
.\build.ps1 -BuildInstaller -InstallerToolset Wix6

# Build the installer (Release, WiX 3 default)
.\build.ps1 -BuildInstaller -Configuration Release

# Build the installer (Release, WiX 6)
.\build.ps1 -BuildInstaller -Configuration Release -InstallerToolset Wix6

WiX 3 artifacts are produced under FLExInstaller/bin/x64/<Config>/ (MSI under en-US/).

WiX 6 artifacts are produced under FLExInstaller/wix6/bin/x64/<Config>/ (MSI under en-US/).

For more details, see specs/001-wix-v6-migration/quickstart.md.

Signing is optional for local builds. By default, local installer builds do not sign and instead record files to sign later.

To enable signing for a local installer build, pass -SignInstaller to build.ps1.

Required for signing:

• Either sign (SIL signing tool) or signtool.exe on PATH.
• If using signtool.exe, set CERTPATH (PFX path) and CERTPASS (password) in the environment.

If you want to control the capture file, set FILESTOSIGNLATER to a file path before building. The build will append files needing signatures to that file.

This repo ships an mcp.json plus PowerShell helpers so MCP-aware editors can spin up the GitHub and Serena servers automatically. See Docs/mcp.md for requirements and troubleshooting tips.

We maintain a human-facing .github/AGENTS.md plus a small curated set of *.instructions.md files under .github/instructions/ for prescriptive constraints.

See .github/AI_GOVERNANCE.md for the documentation taxonomy and “source of truth” rules.

MSBuild Traversal SDK: FieldWorks now uses Microsoft.Build.Traversal SDK with declarative dependency ordering across 110+ projects organized into 21 build phases. This provides automatic parallel builds, better incremental builds, and clearer dependency management.

64-bit only + Registration-free COM: FieldWorks now builds and runs as x64-only with registration-free COM activation. No administrator privileges or COM registration required. See Docs/64bit-regfree-migration.md for details.

Unified launcher: FieldWorks.exe is now the single supported executable. The historical Flex.exe stub (LexTextExe) has been removed; shortcuts and scripts should invoke FieldWorks.exe directly.