Current release for Windows: WIN32 Binaries
Current release for MacOS: MacOS Binaries
Current release for Linux: Linux Binaries
You don't need the sources, unless you wish to compile GBDK-2020 yourself. Download the current release binaries using the links above.
GBDK A C compiler, assembler, linker and set of libraries for the Z80 like Nintendo Gameboy.
- updated CRT and library that suits better for game development
- the latest nightlies of sdcc (the compiler and toolchain) are used from sourceforge. At the moment of writing this the last stable version is 4.0 which has linker issues and won't work if you want to use banks. Please use one of the nightlies available here (we used 11875)
- lcc (the retargetable compiler) supports the latest version of sdcc compiler and toolchain.
For full list of changes see the ChangeLog file
Over the years people have been complaining about all the issues caused by a very old version of SDCC (the compiler). This is a proper attempt of updating it while also keeping all the old functionallity working, like support for banked code and data and so on
The last version in the OLD repo is 2.96 although releases are available until 2.95-3. Version 2.96 is the starting point of this repo
Most users will only need to download and unzip the latest release
Then go to the examples folder and build them (with make.bat on windows or running make). They are a good starting point.
You can still refer to the documentation of GBDK html or pdf
The original website also contains a lot of imformation
For SDCC you can check its website and the manual
The Game Boy Development Forum is a good place to search for answers.
There is also a #gbdk channel in the gbdev Discord community
Unless you are interested on recompiling the sources for some reason (like fixing some bugs) you don't need to build GBDK
- Windows only: Download and install mingw
- Clone, download this repo or just get the source form the releases
- Download and install sdcc nightlies from 11875 onwards (SDCC is no longer part of GDDK so you need to download it (just the binaries) in the platform you need)
- On Linux don't use package managers The latest release available won't work, you need to compile or download one of the nightlies
- Create and environment var SDCCDIR pointint to the folder where you installed sdcc
- Open a command prompt or a terminal, go the root directory of the repo and run make