Keyman for Windows

August 28, 2025 ยท View on GitHub

Platforms

  • x86 (most host processes)
  • x64
  • ARM

Build Prerequisites

Building Keyman for Windows

  1. Start 'Git Bash' (part of Git for Windows).
  2. Run windows/src/build.sh.
  3. Artifacts from a successful build will be placed in windows/bin folder.

Note: running build.sh will currently reset the packages and path settings in your Delphi environment. If you use Delphi for other projects, you should consider building Keyman under a login user dedicated to it, or in a VM.

Type build.sh to see build targets and actions. Common build actions are:

  • build.sh build : builds Keyman for Windows

  • build.sh clean : remove temporary files and build artifacts

  • build.sh publish : makes a release of all Keyman Windows projects

  • build.sh install : install some or all components to Program Files (requires elevated command prompt).

Building without Delphi

It is possible to build all components that do not require Delphi. Currently many components are Delphi-based, but if you are working just in Keyman Core, or Keyman Engine's C++ components, you may be able to get away without building them. In this situation, we recommend copying the relevant Delphi-built components into windows/bin folders from a compatible installed version of Keyman for testing and debugging purposes.

Release builds

A release build is not usually needed for local development. To run a release build, you will need to obtain valid code signing certificates. See Certificates, below. Official release builds for Keyman are built in the Keyman project's CI environment.

  1. Start 'Git Bash'.
  2. Run windows/src/build.sh publish.
  3. Artifacts from a successful build will be placed in windows/release folder.
  4. buildtools/help-keyman-com.sh will push updated documentation to help.keyman.com. Environment variable HELP_KEYMAN_COM needs to be set to the root of the local help.keyman.com git repository.

Note: by default, the version number generated may vary from the current release version. You will not be able to install it over a later version of Keyman, and will need to uninstall and reinstall.

Certificates

In order to create a release build, you will need a code signing certificate. You can use your own certificate, or you can use test certificates which are not globally trusted. The environment variables SC_PFX_SHA1 and SC_PFX_SHA256 can be set to custom certificate paths.

The Keyman repo can build test certificates for you. To build your own, run ./common/windows/delphi/tools/certificates/build.sh certificates to build and install your own local root CA "KeymanTestCA" certificates. If you specify a password for the certificate, you'll need to set that in the environment variable SC_PWD.

Manual certificate installation

You do not need to install the KeymanTest certificates, only the KeymanTestCA certificates.

If you have not already installed the KeymanTestCA certificates using the build.sh command above, to manually install the Keyman KeymanTestCA certificates, do the following in common/windows/delphi/tools/certificates:

  1. Open the certificate and click 'Install certificate...' to open the Certificate Import Wizard.
  2. Select either 'Current User' or 'Local Machine' for 'Store Location' depending on your preference and click Next.
  3. Select 'Place all certificates in the following store' and 'Browse...' to select 'Trusted Root Certification Authorities'. Click Next and finish the wizard.

Crash Reporting

Crash report dialogs as shown by tsysinfo have a few special secret hotkeys useful for development purposes:

  1. Ctrl+C - copy details to clipboard
  2. Ctrl+Shift+C - copy more details to clipboard
  3. Alt+DblClk on icon - open sentry site to event
  4. Ctrl+DblClk on icon - show more details in message box