It will also set file associations for the files we will be using.
The installer will download the program and the modules it needs and will install them. So in this tutorial, I will be using Visual Studio 2010 Express, also freely downloadable from Microsoft. VS2008 is getting a bit old in the tooth, and some of the more modern project files do not really support VS2008. You can also use MinGW and MSYS, but that is a Unix/Linux approach utterly foreign to me (and I could never figure it out anyways).
I am indebted to the author, for this is the way I learned how to compile DOSBox, being a Microsoft loyalist since I first used a PC compatible in the early 90s. You can find it here and you may wish to consult with it if anything in this tutorial is unclear : There is a good tutorial on how to do it in Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition. It is easy enough to compile a DOSBox with the basic features. (No Windows RT.) Since we will be using a Microsoft product to compile the source code, it will not work on any other system. This tutorial assumes you are running DOSBox on some modern version of Windows and using an x86 CPU. To include the debug features, you need the curses library, and the best library for implementing the debugger in Windows is the pdcurses 3.4 library. I have omitted adding the debugger features, if you need them, then this tutorial is probably too basic for you. This tutorial is intended to guide a beginner through the compiling process in order to obtain a fully featured build of DOSBox SVN with important optional features such as IPX and Modem support and Screenshot and Video Recording in Windows. Until the development team releases 0.75, this is the closest you can get. While it is easy enough to find a pre-compiled version of the latest SVN, it may not be able to support screenshots without crashing (EmuCR), has more options in the config file than an average DOSBox user may need (DOSBox-X, Yhkwong's build) or simply won't have the features of that particular patch you are looking for. But DOSBox has not been sitting idly by, the developers have continued to fix bugs and add new features. This is by far the longest time span between releases of the program.
DOSBox is a wonderful program, but in case you haven't noticed, the last official release, 0.74, is rapidly approaching its fourth birthday ().