Build the AWS SDK for C++ on Windows
To set up the AWS SDK for C++, you can either build the SDK yourself directly from the source or download the libraries using a package manager.
The SDK source is separated into individual packages by service. Installing the entire SDK can take up to an hour. Installing only the specific subset of
services that your program uses decreases installation time and also reduces size on disk. To choose which services to install, you need to know the package name
of each service your program uses. You can see the list of package directories at aws/aws-sdk-cpp
aws-sdk-cpp\aws-cpp-sdk-
<packageName>
# Repo directory name and packageName aws-sdk-cpp\aws-cpp-sdk-s3 # Example: Package name is s3
Prerequisites
You need a minimum of 4 GB of RAM to build some of the larger AWS clients. The SDK might fail to build on Amazon EC2 instance types t2.micro, t2.small, and other small instance types due to insufficient memory.
To use the AWS SDK for C++, you need one of the following:
-
Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 or later,
-
GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 4.9 or later, or
-
Clang 3.3 or later.
On Windows, the SDK is built with WinHTTP
To build the SDK with curl library support included
-
Navigate to curl for Windows
and download the curl binary package for Microsoft Windows. -
Unpack the package to a folder on your computer, for example,
C:\curl
. -
Navigate to CA certificates extracted from Mozilla
and download the cacert.pem
file. This Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) file contains a bundle of valid digital certificates that are used to verify the authenticity of secure websites. The certificates are distributed by certificate authority (CA) companies such as GlobalSign and Verisign. -
Move the
cacert.pem
file to thebin
subfolder that you unpacked in a previous step, for example,C:\curl\bin
. Rename the file ascurl-ca-bundle.crt
.
Also, the Microsoft Build Engine (MSBuild) must be able to locate the curl
dll
in the procedure that follows. Therefore, you should add the curl
bin
folder path to your Windows PATH
environment
variable, for example, set
PATH=%PATH%;
. You must add this each
time you open a new command prompt to build the SDK. Alternatively, you can set the
environment variable globally in your Windows system settings so that the setting is
remembered.C:\curl\bin
When Building the SDK from source in the procedure that follows, see Step 5 (Generate build files) for required command syntax to build curl into your SDK.
When writing your code, you must set caFile
in the AWS Client configuration to the location of your
certificate file. For an example using Amazon Transcribe, see transcribe-streaming
Building the SDK from source
You can build the SDK from source using command-line tools. Using this method, you can customize your SDK build. For information about available options, see CMake Parameters. There are three main steps. First, you build the files using CMake. Second, you use MSBuild to build the SDK binaries that work with your operating system and build toolchain. Third, you install or copy the binaries into the correct location on the development machine.
To build the SDK from source
-
Install CMake
(minimum version 3.13) and the relevant build tools for your platform. It is recommended to add cmake
to yourPATH
. To check your version of CMake, open a command prompt and run commandcmake --version
-
In a command prompt, navigate to a folder where you want to store the SDK.
-
Get the latest source code.
Version 1.11 uses git submodules to wrap external dependencies. This includes the CRT libraries described in the AWS SDKs and Tools Reference Guide.
Download or clone the SDK source from
aws/aws-sdk-cpp
on GitHub: -
Clone with Git: HTTPS
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-cpp
-
Clone with Git: SSH
git clone --recurse-submodules git@github.com:aws/aws-sdk-cpp.git
-
-
We recommend you store the generated build files outside of the SDK source directory. Create a new directory to store the build files in and navigate to that folder.
mkdir
sdk_build
cdsdk_build
-
Generate the build files by running
cmake
. Specify on thecmake
command line whether to build a Debug or Release version. ChooseDebug
throughout this procedure to run a debug configuration of your application code. ChooseRelease
throughout this procedure to run a release configuration of your application code. For Windows, the SDK install location is typically\Program Files (x86)\aws-cpp-sdk-all\
. Command syntax:{path to cmake if not in PATH} {path to source location of aws-sdk-cpp} -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=[Debug | Release] -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH={path to install destination}
For more ways to modify the build output, see CMake Parameters.
To generate the build files, do one of the following:
-
Generate build files (all AWS services): To build the entire SDK, run cmake, specifying whether to build a Debug or Release version. For example:
cmake "
..\aws-sdk-cpp
" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
-DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="C:\Program Files (x86)\aws-cpp-sdk-all"
-
Generate build files (subset AWS services): To build only a particular service or services package(s) for the SDK, add the CMake BUILD_ONLY parameter, with the service names separated by semicolons. The following example builds only the Amazon S3 service package:
cmake
..\aws-sdk-cpp
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
-DBUILD_ONLY="s3
" -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="C:\Program Files (x86)\aws-cpp-sdk-all"
-
Generate build files (with curl): After completing the curl prerequisites, three additional cmake command line options are required to include curl support in the SDK: FORCE_CURL, CURL_INCLUDE_DIR, and CURL_LIBRARY. For example:
cmake
..\aws-sdk-cpp
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
-DFORCE_CURL=ON -DCURL_INCLUDE_DIR='C:/curl/include
' -DCURL_LIBRARY='C:/curl/lib/libcurl.dll.a
' -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="C:\Program Files (x86)\aws-cpp-sdk-all"
Note
If you get an error
Failed to build third-party libraries
, check your version of CMake by runningcmake --version
. You must use CMake minimum version 3.13. -
-
Build the SDK binaries. If you’re building the entire SDK, this step can take one hour or longer. Command syntax:
{path to cmake if not in PATH} --build . --config=[Debug | Release]
cmake --build . --config=
Debug
Note
If you encounter the error
The code execution cannot proceed ... dll not found. Reinstalling the program may fix this problem."
, retry thecmake
command again. -
Open a command prompt with administrator privileges to install the SDK in the location specified earlier using the
CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH
parameter. Command syntax:{path to cmake if not in PATH} --install . --config=[Debug | Release]
cmake --install . --config=
Debug
Building for Android on Windows
To build for Android, add -DTARGET_ARCH=ANDROID
to your cmake
command line. The AWS SDK for C++ includes a CMake toolchain file that includes what you need by
referencing the appropriate environment variables (ANDROID_NDK
).
To build the SDK for Android on Windows, you need to run cmake
from a
Visual Studio (2015 or later) developer command prompt. You’ll also need NMAKE NMAKEgit
and
patch
in your path. If you have git installed on a Windows system, you’ll most likely
find
patch
in a sibling directory (.../Git/usr/bin/
). Once you’ve
verified these requirements, your cmake
command line will change slightly to
use NMAKE.
cmake -G "NMake Makefiles" `-DTARGET_ARCH=ANDROID` <other options> ..
NMAKE builds serially. To build more quickly, we recommend you install JOM as an
alternative to NMAKE, and then change the cmake
invocation as follows:
cmake -G "NMake Makefiles JOM" `-DTARGET_ARCH=ANDROID` <other options> ..
For an example application, see Setting up an Android application with AWS SDK for C++