Windows Installation Instructions

To develop for PX4 on Windows, follow the instructions in Windows Cygwin Toolchain.

Tip The Cygwin toolchain supports building for NuttX/Pixhawk and jMAVSim simulator targets. If you want to build for other targets, consider setting up a dual boot system with Ubuntu Linux.

Additional Tools

After setting up the build/simulation toolchain, see Additional Tools for information about other useful “general development” tools.

Next Steps

Once you have finished setting up the environment, continue to the build instructions.

Other Windows Toolchains

There are a number of other legacy/alternative solutions that may be of interest to some developers. A comparison of the options is provided below.

Note The Cygwin Toolchain is the only one that is supported by the PX4 dev team. It is regularly tested as part of our continuous integration system and is known to be better performing than the other alternatives.

	Cygwin Toolchain (Supported)	Virtual Machine Toolchain	Bash on Windows Toolchain
Installation	MSI installer or Script	Script	Script
Native binary execution	yes	no	no
Performance	++	—	-
ARM Targets	++ (quick)	+ (VM USB)	+
Simulation jMAVSim	++	+	+
Simulation gazebo	- (not yet)	+ (slow)	+ (slow)
Support	+	++ (Linux)	+/-
Comments

New in 2018
Slim setup
Portable

Full Linux features
CPU & RAM intensive
Disk space intensive

Simulation UI is a “hack”.
Windows 10 only
Essentially a VM