* Manually including libraries into the project while a perfectly acceptable solution leads to slow updates and large maintainance costs. To address this shortcoming we are introducing a package manager namely vcpkg into the codebase to handle the download and build of most external dependencies. Conan was also considered but vcpkg was chosen due to the centralized nature of the project. To achieve the integration the CMake configuration has been altered but not by much: 1. Packages handled by vcpkg have been moved from externals/CMakeLists.txt to the root one to make them available to all subdirectories. 2. In addition now find_package is used in accordance to the vcpkg recommendations. 3. All libraries built by vcpkg have been updated to their latest available version, except for Qt because our codebase isn't compatible with Qt 6.0 yet. Currently there are build issues caused by the fmtlib upgrade. Another question is how to handle large libraries like Qt, Boost and SDL2 which will be addressed in a later commit.
BEFORE FILING AN ISSUE, READ THE RELEVANT SECTION IN THE CONTRIBUTING FILE!!!
Citra
Citra is an experimental open-source Nintendo 3DS emulator/debugger written in C++. It is written with portability in mind, with builds actively maintained for Windows, Linux and macOS.
Citra emulates a subset of 3DS hardware and therefore is useful for running/debugging homebrew applications, and it is also able to run many commercial games! Some of these do not run at a playable state, but we are working every day to advance the project forward. (Playable here means compatibility of at least "Okay" on our game compatibility list.)
Citra is licensed under the GPLv2 (or any later version). Refer to the license.txt file included. Please read the FAQ before getting started with the project.
Check out our website!
Need help? Check out our asking for help guide.
For development discussion, please join us on our Discord server or at #citra-dev on libera.
Releases
Citra has two main release channels: Nightly and Canary.
The Nightly build is based on the master branch, and contains already reviewed and tested features.
The Canary build is based on the master branch, but with additional features still under review. PRs tagged canary-merge
are merged only into the Canary builds.
Both builds can be installed with the installer provided on the website, but those looking for specific versions or standalone releases can find them in the release tabs of the Nightly and Canary repositories.
Currently, development and releases of the Android version are in a separate repository.
A Flatpak for Citra is available on Flathub. Details on the build process can be found in our Flathub repository.
Development
Most of the development happens on GitHub. It's also where our central repository is hosted.
If you want to contribute please take a look at the Contributor's Guide and Developer Information. You should also contact any of the developers in the forum in order to know about the current state of the emulator because the TODO list isn't maintained anymore.
If you want to contribute to the user interface translation, please check out the citra project on transifex. We centralize the translation work there, and periodically upstream translations.
Building
- Windows: Windows Build
- Linux: Linux Build
- macOS: macOS Build
Support
We happily accept monetary donations or donated games and hardware. Please see our donations page for more information on how you can contribute to Citra. Any donations received will go towards things like:
- 3DS consoles for developers to explore the hardware
- 3DS games for testing
- Any equipment required for homebrew
- Infrastructure setup
We also more than gladly accept used 3DS consoles! If you would like to give yours away, don't hesitate to join our Discord server and talk to bunnei.