I need to download and compile plink/pscp on my Windows. Since I need specific version (0.69), I searched for the tag, and checked out to that commit. In putty readme, they write that if I want to compile on windows, there is Visual studio solution: Inside the windows/MSVC subdirectory are MS Visual Studio project files for doing GUI-based builds of the various PuTTY utilities. These have been tested on Visual Studio 7 and 10. You should be able to build each PuTTY utility by loading the corresponding .dsp file in Visual Studio. For example, MSVC/putty/putty.dsp builds PuTTY itself, MSVC/plink