A guide to compiling Aseprite (1.12.18).
Aseprite is a 2D image creation tool geared towards pixel art sprite creation. It's robust, cross-platform, and stable.
Aseprite is a commercial application, but its source code is available. The EULA allows you to "compile and modify the source code [...] for your own personal purpose or to propose a contribution" to Aseprite (section 2g). This means if you want to try out Aseprite for free, you can compile the source code yourself.
WARNING: Even though you can compile Aseprite and have full use of it without purchasing a commercial license, you are NOT allowed to use it commercially or publicly, such as by publishing a game that uses assets you created using an unlicensed, compiled version of Aseprite. Consider it an unlimited trial version. If you have the money to support the amazing developers, please do so. You pay once and have updates for life.
It is also worth noting that there exists a version of Aseprite called Libresprite, which was forked from the last commit of Aseprite that was licensed under the GNU General Public License. If you like Aseprite and want a true free software pixel art editor, consider checking it out.
NOTE: This guide currently covers compiling on Windows. This information is sourced from the installation guide on the Aseprite GitHub. Refer to it for the most up to date version and any extras I may have glossed over.
Compiling - The act of taking human readable source code and turning it into machine readable binary data with the use of programs called compilers.
The following are what are formally needed to be able to compile Aseprite. Setting them up on your system is explained in the Setting up your dev environment section.
- Windows 10 (Windows 7 may be possible)
- Visual Studio Community 2019
- The Desktop development with C++ item + Windows 10.0.18362.0 SDK from the Visual Studio installer
- And a compiled version of the
aseprite-m81branch of the Skia library.
If you have installed Unity before, there's a very good chance you already have Visual Studio Community 2019. The only thing you will need to do is modify it to have the Windows 10.0.18362.0 SDK.
If you haven't installed Unity before, then you will need to download and install Visual Studio Community 2019.
Note: This is not the same as VS Code.
To install the Windows 10.0.18362.0 SDK you will need to get to the modification menu (or simply select it during installation if you are installing). This can be done by searching for "Visual Studio Installer" and opening it up. When in the Installer, click to "Modify" Visual Studio 2019. Under "Workloads", select "Desktop development with C++" which can be found under "Desktop & Mobile".
You will then need to make sure the select the SDK under the "Individual Components" tab if it hasn't already been selected. You can search for "10.0.17763" to find it quickly.
Once you have selected the components you need, hit modify (or install) in the bottom right corner to finish the Visual Studio set up.
They've made it easier! No longer do you have to compile Skia anymore, you can just grab a build of it from here. Make sure to grab the x64 version for Windows, unless you somehow are still running a 32 bit system. Then, make sure to extract it in C:\deps\skia so that the skia folder looks like this:
Since Skia is precompiled, you just need to grab Aseprite sources:
Download the 1.12.18 source code from https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite/releases/download/v1.2.18/Aseprite-v1.2.18-Source.zip and extract it to C:\aseprite
Once you've done that,
Open a x64 developer command prompt
or command line (cmd.exe) and call:
call "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat" -arch=x64
Then do the following:
cd aseprite
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -DLAF_BACKEND=skia -DSKIA_DIR=C:\deps\skia -DSKIA_LIBRARY_DIR=C:\deps\skia\out\Release-x64 -G Ninja ..
ninja aseprite
Ninja will compile Aseprite and if all goes well, you should not see a message like this:
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.
You can then find the executable inside C:\aseprite\build\bin\aseprite.exe.
If you do not plan to do debugging, you can get rid of all the files except for aseprite.exe and the data folder.
