The following projects are included with the lizard distribution:

• VS2010 - Visual Studio 2010 project (which also works well with Visual Studio 2012, 2013, 2015)

1. Install Visual Studio e.g. VS 2015 Community Edition (it's free).
2. Download the latest version of lizard from https://github.com/inikep/lizard/releases
3. Decompress ZIP archive.
4. Go to decompressed directory then to visual then VS2010 and open lizard.sln
5. Visual Studio will ask about converting VS2010 project to VS2015 and you should agree.
6. Change Debug to Release and if you have 64-bit Windows change also Win32 to x64.
7. Press F7 on keyboard or select BUILD from the menu bar and choose Build Solution.
8. If compilation will be fine a compiled executable will be in visual\VS2010\bin\x64_Release\lizard.exe

The Visual Studio solution file lizard.sln contains many projects that will be compiled to the visual\VS2010\bin\$(Platform)_$(Configuration) directory. For example lizard set to x64 and Release will be compiled to visual\VS2010\bin\x64_Release\lizard.exe. The solution file contains the following projects:

• lizard : Command Line Utility, supporting gzip-like arguments
• datagen : Synthetic and parametrable data generator, for tests
• frametest : Test tool that checks lizard_frame integrity on target platform
• fullbench : Precisely measure speed for each lizard inner functions
• fuzzer : Test tool, to check lizard integrity on target platform
• liblizard : A static Lizard library compiled to liblizard_static.lib
• liblizard-dll : A dynamic Lizard library (DLL) compiled to liblizard.dll with the import library liblizard.lib
• fullbench-dll : The fullbench program compiled with the import library; the executable requires Lizard DLL

The header files lib\lizard.h, lib\lizardhc.h, lib\lizard_frame.h and the import library visual\VS2010\bin\$(Platform)_$(Configuration)\liblizard.lib are required to compile a project using Visual C++.

1. The path to header files should be added to Additional Include Directories that can be found in Project Properties of Visual Studio IDE in the C/C++ Property Pages on the General page.
2. The import library has to be added to Additional Dependencies that can be found in Project Properties in the Linker Property Pages on the Input page. If one will provide only the name liblizard.lib without a full path to the library then the directory has to be added to Linker\General\Additional Library Directories.

The compiled executable will require Lizard DLL which is available at visual\VS2010\bin\$(Platform)_$(Configuration)\liblizard.dll.