Installing Red on Windows
Installing the pre-requirements
Please install the pre-requirements by following instructions from one of the following subsections.
Using PowerShell and Chocolatey (recommended)
To install via PowerShell, search “powershell” in the Windows start menu, right-click on it and then click “Run as administrator”.
Then run each of the following commands:
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072
iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))
choco upgrade git --params "/GitOnlyOnPath /WindowsTerminal" -y
choco upgrade visualstudio2022-workload-vctools -y
choco upgrade python311 -y
For Audio support, you should also run the following command before exiting:
choco upgrade temurin17 -y
From here, exit the prompt then continue onto Creating a Virtual Environment.
Manually installing dependencies
Attention
There are additional configuration steps required which are not documented for installing dependencies manually. These dependencies are only listed separately here for reference purposes.
Attention
Please make sure that the box to add Python to PATH is CHECKED, otherwise you may run into issues when trying to run Red.
Attention
Please choose the option to “Git from the command line and also from 3rd-party software” in Git’s setup.
Java 17 - needed for Audio
From here, continue onto Creating a Virtual Environment.
Creating a Virtual Environment
Tip
If you want to learn more about virtual environments, see page: About Virtual Environments.
We require installing Red into a virtual environment. Don’t be scared, it’s very straightforward.
First, choose a directory where you would like to create your virtual environment. It’s a good idea
to keep it in a location which is easy to type out the path to. From now, we’ll call it
redenv and it will be located in your home directory.
Start with opening a command prompt (open Start, search for “command prompt”, then click it).
Note
You shouldn’t run command prompt as administrator when creating your virtual environment, or running Red.
Warning
These commands will not work in PowerShell - you have to use command prompt as said above.
Then create your virtual environment with the following command
py -3.11 -m venv "%userprofile%\redenv"
And activate it with the following command
"%userprofile%\redenv\Scripts\activate.bat"
Important
You must activate the virtual environment with the above command every time you open a new Command Prompt to run, install or update Red.
Installing Red
Attention
You may need to restart your computer after installing dependencies for the PATH changes to take effect.
Run one of the following set of commands, depending on what extras you want installed
Normal installation:
python -m pip install -U pip wheel python -m pip install -U Red-DiscordBotWith PostgreSQL support:
python -m pip install -U pip wheel python -m pip install -U Red-DiscordBot[postgres]
Setting Up and Running Red
After installation, set up your instance with the following command:
redbot-setup
This will set the location where data will be stored, as well as your storage backend and the name of the instance (which will be used for running the bot).
Once done setting up the instance, run the following command to run Red:
redbot <your instance name>
It will walk through the initial setup, asking for your token and a prefix. See how to obtain a token.
Tip
If it’s the first time you’re using Red, you should check our Getting started guide that will walk you through all essential information on how to interact with Red.
