Windows doesn't have a built-in "make" environment, so as well as installing the toolchain you will need a GNU-compatible environment. We use the MSYS2_ environment to provide this. You don't need to use this environment all the time (you can use :doc:`Eclipse </eclipse-setup>` or some other front-end), but it runs behind the scenes.
Unzip the zip file to ``C:\`` (or some other location, but this guide assumes ``C:\``) and it will create an "msys32" directory with a pre-prepared environment.
Rather than use the pre-prepared environment, you can :doc:`alternatively follow this guide to set up the MSYS2 environment from scratch <windows-setup-scratch>`.
**Important**: Just having this toolchain is *not enough* to use ESP-IDF on Windows. You will need GNU make, bash, and sed at minimum. The above environments provide all this, plus a host compiler (required for menuconfig support).
Change to the directory you want to clone the SDK into by typing a command like this one: ``cd "C:/path/to/dir"`` (note the forward-slashes in the path). Then type ``git clone --recursive https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf.git``
*NOTE*: While cloning submodules, the ``git clone`` command may print some output starting ``': not a valid identifier...``. This is a `known issue`_ but the git clone still succeeds without any problems.
ESP-IDF by itself does not build a binary to run on the ESP32. The binary "app" comes from a project in a different directory. Multiple projects can share the same ESP-IDF directory on your computer.
The process is the same as for checking out the ESP-IDF from github. Change to the parent directory and run ``git clone https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf-template.git``.
You can also find a range of example projects under the "examples" directory in IDF. These example project directories can be copied to outside IDF in order to begin your own projects.
Type a command like this to set the path to ESP-IDF directory: ``export IDF_PATH="C:/path/to/esp-idf"`` (note the forward-slashes not back-slashes for the path). If you don't want to run this command every time you open an MSYS2 window, create a new file in ``C:/msys32/etc/profile.d/`` and paste this line in - then it will be run each time you open an MYS2 terminal.
Use ``cd`` to change to the project directory (not the ESP-IDF directory.) Type ``make menuconfig`` to configure your project, then ``make`` to build it, ``make clean`` to remove built files, and ``make flash`` to flash (use the menuconfig to set the serial port for flashing.)
