Building on Windows, Targeting Linux via WSL

WSL is the Windows Subsystem for Linux, which allows you to run Linux applications inside Windows. It is available in recent builds of Windows 10 (>19041) and in Windows 11. Because Babylon Native apps are GUI applications, you will need WSL version 2.

Follow these instructions to prepare a WSL environment with GUI support. Babylon Native has been tested on Ubuntu; other distributions may or may not work.

Once your environment is ready, you can open an Ubuntu shell and navigate to /mnt to view your Windows filesystem. (If you're using Windows Terminal, new WSL tabs will open directly in %USERPROFILE%.)

From there you can find your BabylonNative directory and create a new ubuntu directory under build. Then, proceed with the instructions in the readme for Building on Ubuntu, Targeting Linux, using ../.. as your path for CMake rather than ...

After you run ninja, you can launch the playground by running /Apps/Playground/Playground. You should see a playground window appear, and output will be displayed in your shell.