Get MuseScore's source code

Summary

1. Create a projects folder
2. Fork MuseScore's repository
3. Clone the repository
4. Set the remotes
5. Adding required dependencies

You must have Git installed on your computer (see Set up Developer Environment).

Create a projects folder

Before you download any source code, it's a good idea to create a folder called Projects, code or src that you can use to store code projects on your machine.

Tips for creating the projects folder (click to show/hide)

General advice for all operating systems: For best performance, make sure the projects folder is located on a modern filesystem that is native to your operating system. Native filesystems: NTFS on Windows, APFS on macOS, BTRFS or EXT4 on Linux. Don't try to share the same project folder between different operating systems (e.g. Windows, macOS, Linux) as this can cause corruptions. Sharing between different versions of the same operating system should be OK providing a similar version of Git is used on each. Avoid having spaces, special characters, or non-ASCII characters in any component of the project folder's file path. These characters make life difficult on the command line and may cause errors during compilation. Make sure you have read and write permission to the projects folder and its contents. Never use sudo or "Run as administrator" privileges when compiling code. Don't put Git repositories in a location that is backed up or synced by other software (e.g. Dropbox, OneDrive, Syncthing, etc.). Instead, make commits regularly and push them to a remote repository (your fork) to create a backup. Windows users should create the projects folder at the root of a drive, such as the C: drive. Code projects often include subfolders nested many levels deep, particularly inside build folders after compilation. Placing projects at the root of a drive means that you are less likely to exceed the 260 character limit that Windows places on the length of file paths.

Linux and macOS

You could create the projects folder inside your Home directory:

cd ~                # change (go) to your home directory
mkdir src           # create new directory for source projects

Windows

Create the projects folder at the root of an NTFS-formatted drive, such as your C: drive:

# Change (go) to the C: drive's root directory:
cd C:\              # PowerShell or CMD
cd /c               # Git Bash

# Create new directory for source projects:
mkdir src

It's best to keep code projects near the root of the drive to avoid encountering the 260 character limit Windows places on the length of file paths.

Fork MuseScore's repository

A 'fork' is a remote (online) copy of a repository. After the fork has been made, it can be edited freely without affecting the original repository.

You must create a fork if you want to be able to edit MuseScore's code and contribute your changes back to the official repository. However, if you just want to compile the code without editing it then you can skip creating the fork and move on to the next step.

To create a fork:

1. Sign-in to GitHub (create a free account if necessary).
2. Visit MuseScore's official repository page: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore
3. Click the "Fork" button in the top right to create your personal fork.

Your fork exists at https://github.com/USERNAME/MuseScore where USERNAME is your GitHub username (e.g. shoogle's fork is here).

Clone the repository

A clone is a local (offline) copy of a repository. It's basically a folder on your computer that contains the code for you to edit and/or compile.

If you made a fork then you should clone that, otherwise clone the official repository. Make the clone inside your projects folder.

# Go to your source code projects folder. For example:
cd ~/src            # Linux and macOS
cd C:\src           # Windows - PowerShell or CMD
cd /c/src           # Windows - Git Bash

# Clone your fork if you have one:
git clone https://github.com/USERNAME/MuseScore  # replace USERNAME with your GitHub username

# Otherwise clone the official repo:
git clone https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore

Tip: If you have a fork, consider using its SSH URL [email protected]:USERNAME/MuseScore.git instead of the HTTPS URL with the git clone command. This requires additional setup, but it means that you don't have to enter your password every time you push code changes to GitHub.

The git clone command puts the code in a new folder called "MuseScore". You should change to this directory now:

cd MuseScore

This directory is used as the working directory for all subsequent commands, including on subsequent pages of this guide.

Set the remotes

Git is able to push (upload code to) and pull (download code from) remote repositories, known as "remotes".

Run these commands to set the remotes for your local repository:

# If you cloned your fork earlier:
git remote add upstream https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore.git
git remote set-url upstream --push disabled  # prevent accidental push to official repo (team members only)

# If you cloned the official repo:
git remote set-url origin --push disabled    # prevent accidental push to official repo (team members only)

Explanation of the above commands (click to show/hide)

Earlier, when you cloned the repository, a default remote called origin was automatically created. It points to the URL you used with git clone, which was either your fork or the official repository. When origin is a fork, the convention is to create another remote called upstream that points to the official repository. This is useful later when you want to pull new code from the official repository to keep your fork up to date. The official repository should only ever be used with pull commands, hence pushing must be disabled on whichever remote represents the official repository. However, it is only necessary for team members to disable it explicitly because GitHub will refuse pushes from users who are not team members anyway.

Use this command to show details about all the remote repositories that Git is aware of:

git remote -v

Hint: You can create additional remotes later on with git add remote [name] [url]. This is useful if you ever need to pull from, or push to, another person's fork instead of your own.

Adding required dependencies

Windows

For Windows, download the required dependencies here. After you extract the contents, put it inside the MuseScore folder, between the other folders such as assets, share, src, etc. If you followed the earlier instructions exactly, it will be located at ~/src/MuseScore. Additionally, to prevent certain compilation errors, you may need to download and install a recent version of Windows SDK:

• either select it in the Visual Studio Installer by "modifying your installation" (for example, select version 10.0.22621 or newer)
• or download it separately from https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/windows-sdk/, but for some people the installer from this website doesn't seem to do anything.

After installing this SDK, you may need to restart your computer before the new one gets picked up by all tools.

macOS

You need to install libsndfile:

brew install libsndfile

Linux

You need to install libsndfile:

# (one of these, as appropriate for your OS)
sudo apt-get install libsndfile1-dev
sudo dnf install libsndfile-devel
sudo pacman -S libsndfile

Ubuntu 22.04: libssl1.1

Ubuntu 22.04 does not include the packaging reference for libssl1.1, download the appropriate version from http://nz2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openssl/?C=M;O=D and install it with dpkg For example:

wget http://nz2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl1.1_1.1.1f-1ubuntu2.17_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i libssl1.1_1.1.1f-1ubuntu2.17_amd64.deb