Development builds¶

Warning

These are unstable development snapshots intended for testing and showcasing new features; if you want to download a stable build, head on to the Windows, macOS, or Linux download pages.

Build artifacts are hosted on GitHub; you need to be logged in to GitHub to download them.

Download link	Build version	Date

¹ Windows builds include x86_64 installer and portable ZIP packages, and the experimental ARM64 portable ZIP package.

² macOS builds include Intel, Apple silicon, and universal binary package.

³ We provide a statically linked x86_64 Linux package (only depends on C/C++, ALSA, and OpenGL system libraries).

Installation notes¶

Windows¶

Windows executables in snapshot packages are not signed, therefore Windows 10 or later might prevent the program from starting.

See this guide to learn how to deal with this.

macOS¶

macOS development builds are not notarized (but the public releases are); Apple Gatekeeper will try to prevent the program from running.

See this guide to learn how to deal with this.

Linux¶

The tarball contains a dynamically-linked x86-64 build; you’ll need additional dependencies installed via your package manager.

Fedora¶

sudo dnf install SDL2 SDL2_net opusfile

Debian, Ubuntu¶

sudo apt install libsdl2-2.0-0 libsdl2-net-2.0-0 libopusfile0

Arch, Manjaro¶

sudo pacman -S sdl2 sdl2_net opusfile

Upgrading your primary configuration¶

Testing new features might require a manual reset of the configuration file.

Since config settings might get renamed, altered, or deprecated between builds, it’s best to let DOSBox Staging write the new default primary config on the first launch, then reapply your old settings manually.

Start by backing up your existing primary config. This is where to find it on each platform:


Windows	`C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\DOSBox\dosbox-staging.conf`
macOS	`~/Library/Preferences/DOSBox/dosbox-staging.conf`
Linux	`~/.config/dosbox/dosbox-staging.conf`

You can also execute DOSBox Staging with the --printconf option to have the location of the primary config printed to your console.

After backing up the existing primary config, simply start the new version—a new dosbox-staging.conf will be written containing the new defaults and updated setting descriptions.

Portable mode notes

In portable mode, dosbox-staging.conf resides in the same folder as your DOSBox Staging executable. The migration steps for portable mode users are as follows:

Unpack the new version into a new folder (this is important).
Create a new empty dosbox-staging.conf file in the new folder to enable portable mode.
Launch the new version.

DOSBox Staging will write the new defaults to the empty dosbox-staging.conf file. After this, you carry over your settings from the old primary config manually.

After upgrading¶

Look for deprecation warnings in the logs (in yellow or orange colours) and update your configs accordingly.