Development builds¶
Warning
These are unstable development snapshots intended for testing and
showcasing new features. Things might blow up! 
Less adventurous users wanting to download the latest stable build should head on to the Windows, macOS, or Linux download pages.
Info
The development builds are hosted on GitHub; you need to have a GitHub account to download them. If you’re not logged in to GitHub, you will see the build artifacts but clicking on their names won’t initiate the download.
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Installation notes¶
Windows¶
Windows builds include x86_64 installer (artifact name ending with -setup)
and portable ZIP packages.
The Windows executables are not signed, therefore Windows 10 or later might prevent the program from starting. See this guide to learn how to deal with this.
macOS¶
Please download the universal binary package named
dosbox-staging-macOS-universal-*.
macOS development builds are not notarized (but the stable releases are); Apple Gatekeeper will try to prevent the program from running. See this guide to learn how to deal with this.
Linux¶
We provide statically linked x86_64 Linux packages that only depend on C/C++, ALSA, and OpenGL system libraries.
How to upgrade your configuration¶
Testing new features might require a manual reset of the configuration file.
Start by backing up your existing primary config. These are the standard non-portable mode locations for each platform:
| Windows | C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\DOSBox\dosbox-staging.conf |
| macOS | ~/Library/Preferences/DOSBox/dosbox-staging.conf |
| Linux | ~/.config/dosbox/dosbox-staging.conf |
In portable mode, dosbox-staging.conf resides in the same folder as your
DOSBox Staging executable.
Alternatively, run DOSBox Staging with the --printconf option, which will
print the location of the primary config to your console.
The easy way¶
Once you’ve backed up your primary config, start the new version, then run
config -wcd to update the primary config. That’s it!
This method will work 90% of the time, but certain setting changes cannot be automatically migrated. Look for deprecation warnings in the logs (in yellow or orange colour), then compare your current and old configs and update your settings accordingly.
Check out the new config descriptions for guidance, and also make sure to read the release notes carefully—everything you need to know about upgrading your settings is described there.
The correct way¶
The 100% correct (but more cumbersome) way is to let DOSBox Staging write the new default primary config on the first launch, then reapply your old settings manually. This is very simple: after backing up your existing primary config, delete it, then start the new version.
For portable installations, put an empty dosbox-staging.conf file in the
installation folder to enable portable mode (otherwise DOSBox Staging would
create the new default primary config in the standard non-portable location).