> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.mozilla.ai/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.mozilla.ai/llamafile/using-llamafile/building_dlls.md).

# Building DLLs

This document provides instructions to replicate our Windows DLL builds.

## Requirements:

* Windows 11 (x64)
* Build Tools for Visual Studio 2022
* [MSYS2](https://www.msys2.org/)
* [CUDA 12.9.1](https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-12-9-1-download-archive?target_os=Windows\&target_arch=x86_64\&target_version=11)
* [AMD HIP SDK](https://www.amd.com/en/developer/resources/rocm-hub/hip-sdk.html) 7.1.1
* [Vulkan SDK](https://vulkan.lunarg.com/sdk/home#windows) 1.4.341.1

## In the MSYS shell

As our Makefile makes massive use of unix shell applications, it's much easier to just replicate that environment. We'll need it just to setup the repo (with `make setup`), which initializes all the submodules and applies our patches to the original code. In theory after the setup you should also be able to run `make -j8` to build llamafile with cosmocc on Windows (but honestly, why?)

* install the required tools (vim is not really required)

```
pacman -S git patch unzip wget make vim
```

* create a build workspace

```
mkdir /c/Users/Your_Username/workspace
cd /c/Users/Your_Username/workspace
```

* clone the repo

```
git clone https://github.com/mozilla-ai/llamafile
```

* setup

```
cd llamafile
make setup
```

## In the Windows terminal

After the repo is set up, you can build the cuda / rocm / vulkan DLLs as follows. The .bat files to run the builds are in the `llamafile` directory and accept the following parameters:

* `--clean` to restart a build from scratch
* `--output` to provide a custom output filename for the dll (default is ggml-xxxx.dll in the current directory for xxxx in (cuda, rocm, vulkan)
* only for the cuda libraries, you also have the `--cublas` option to link the library against NVIDIA's cublas instead of tinyblas

Also note that for cuda and rocm libraries there are `*_parallel.bat` scripts that should work faster by parallelizing compilation and taking advantage of your compute. Here's how you call the build scripts:

* cd to the llamafile dir and start CUDA parallel build (this will run for a while...)

```
cd c:\Users\Your_Username\Workspace\llamafile
llamafile\cuda_parallel.bat
```

![images/win\_cuda\_build.png](/files/I6A0dcUH4i1LRJbjUv1F)

* run ROCm parallel build as follows:

```
llamafile\rocm_parallel.bat
```

* run Vulkan build as follows (parallel is not needed, this is usually much faster than the other two):

```
llamafile\vulkan.bat
```

At the end of this process, you should have the following libraries available in your llamafile directory (note that sizes might differ):

```
03/31/2026  02:15 PM       717,095,936 ggml-cuda.dll
03/31/2026  02:44 PM       502,854,656 ggml-rocm.dll
03/31/2026  02:46 PM        31,482,880 ggml-vulkan.dll
```

To run llamafile with these libraries, add them in your home directory or bundle them in your llamafile (see [Creating a llamafile](/llamafile/using-llamafile/creating_llamafiles.md)).


---

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