Current release for Windows: WIN32 Binaries
Current release for MacOS: MacOS 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.
The last version in the old repo is 2.96 although releases are available until 2.95-3.
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 banks support
Version 2.96 is the starting point of this repo
Although sdcc already includes a library supporting Game Boy development, the linker is broken and does not support banks (more info here). Years ago it was discovered that it is still posible to link with the old linker link-gbz80 while also updating sdcc. Here is what has been updated
- sdcc (the compiler), fully removed the old one and using the latest version from sourceforge
- sdccp (the preprocessor) also from the same repo
- sdasgb (the assembler) has also been updated
- link-gbz80 (the linker) is kept as it was, because it works and has banking support. Support for far calls, aka BANKED functions has also been added
- lcc (the retargetable compiler) to support the new versions of sdcc, sdcpp and sdasgb
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 (SDCC is no longer part of GDDK so you need to download it (just the binaries) in the platform you need)
- 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