Merge pull request #3616 from szarnyasg/windows-installation-instruct…

…ions

Add build instructions for Windows

docs/dev/building/build_instructions.md

@@ -8,14 +8,16 @@ title: Building Instructions
 DuckDB needs CMake and a C++11-compliant compiler (e.g., GCC, Apple-Clang, MSVC).
 Additionally, we recommend using the [Ninja build system](https://ninja-build.org/), which automatically parallelizes the build process.
 
-Clone the DuckDB repository.
+## UNIX-like Systems
+
+### macOS Packages
+
+Install Xcode and [Homebrew](https://brew.sh/). Then, install the required packages with:
 
 ```bash
-git clone https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb
+brew install git cmake ninja
 ```
 
-We recommend creating a full clone of the repository. Note that the directory uses approximately 1.2 GB of disk space.
-
 ### Linux Packages
 
 Install the required packages with the package manager of your distribution.
@@ -38,21 +40,17 @@ Alpine Linux:
 apk add g++ git make cmake ninja
 ```
 
-### macOS
+### Cloning the Repository
 
-Install Xcode and [Homebrew](https://brew.sh/). Then, install the required packages with:
+Clone the DuckDB repository:
 
 ```bash
-brew install cmake ninja
+git clone https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb
 ```
 
-### Windows
+We recommend creating a full clone of the repository. Note that the directory uses approximately 1.3 GB of disk space.
 
-Consult the [Windows CI workflow](https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/blob/v0.10.2/.github/workflows/Windows.yml#L234) for a list of packages used to build DuckDB on Windows.
-
-On Windows, the DuckDB Python package requires the [Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-US/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist) to be built and [to run]({% link docs/api/python/known_issues.md %}#error-when-importing-the-duckdb-python-package-on-windows).
-
-## Building DuckDB
+### Building DuckdB
 
 To build DuckDB we use a Makefile which in turn calls into CMake. We also advise using [Ninja](https://ninja-build.org/manual.html) as the generator for CMake.
 
@@ -62,6 +60,14 @@ GEN=ninja make
 
 > Bestpractice It is not advised to directly call CMake, as the Makefile sets certain variables that are crucial to properly building the package.
 
+Once the build finishes successfully, you can find the `duckdb` binary in the `build` directory:
+
+```bash
+build/release/duckdb
+```
+
+### Linking Extensions
+
 For testing, it can be useful to build DuckDB with statically linked core extensions. To do so, run:
 
 ```bash
@@ -76,6 +82,28 @@ CORE_EXTENSIONS='autocomplete;icu;parquet;json;delta' GEN=ninja make
 
 For more details, see the [“Building Extensions” page]({% link docs/dev/building/building_extensions.md %}).
 
+## Windows
+
+On Windows, DuckDB requires the [Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable package](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-US/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist) both as a build-time and runtime dependency.
+
+To build DuckDB, install [MSYS2](https://www.msys2.org/) and open a MINGW64 session.
+Install the required dependencies using Pacman. When prompted with `Enter a selection (default=all)`, select the default option by pressing `Enter`.
+Note that unlike the build process on UNIX-like systems, the Windows build directly calls CMake.
+
+```bash
+pacman -Syu git mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-ninja
+git clone https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb
+cd duckdb
+cmake -G "Ninja" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DBUILD_EXTENSIONS="icu;parquet;json"
+cmake --build . --config Release 
+```
+
+Once the build finishes successfully, you can find the `duckdb.exe` binary in the repository's directory:
+
+```bash
+./duckdb.exe
+```
+
 ## Troubleshooting
 
 ### The Build Runs Out of Memory