some documentation updates including date stamp

dat/history

@@ -274,6 +274,70 @@ some bug fixes.
 NetHack 3.6.7 was released on February 16, 2023 containing a security fix and
 some bug fixes.
 
+Development work for the major release to follow NetHack 3.6 began in 2015
+around the same time as NetHack 3.6.0 was being released. That development
+work continued in parallel to each of the NetHack 3.6 releases from 2015
+through 2023, and continued until the end of April 2026.  For the first time,
+that development was shared publicly on GitHub and SourceForge as it occurred.
+It was done under the label NetHack-3.7 work-in-progress (WIP), although the
+version number for the next release had not yet been solidified.
+
+Exposure of the development to the public brought many good things, and some
+challenges. People were able to observe and criticize changes and new features
+almost immediately, and they often did. The GitHub pull request system made
+it straightforward for people to contribute directly to development.
+Contributions resolved many, many bugs in the game and we thank all the
+contributors.
+
+In early 2026, with the game development getting stable enough to consider
+initiating an official release, the devteam reviewed the nature and number of
+changes in the game. It was clear that there was sufficient depth and
+breadth to warrant a major release and version 5.0 was decided on.
+That's a new major release over 3.x, without opening up any ambiguity
+or confusion with existing variants that there might have been had it
+been released as version 4.0.
+
+NetHack 5.0.0 was released on May 2, 2026.
+
+The source code for NetHack 5.0.0 was modified and modernized to be
+compliant with standard C99. The 5.0.0 release contained over 3100 fixes,
+changes, and updated features.
+
+NetHack 5.0 was the first version to replace the lex and yacc level
+and dungeon compilers of past versions, with a new Lua interpreter-based
+approach to provide those elements. Lua is also used for the quest texts
+in NetHack 5.0.0. The entire development team acknowledges the work
+done by Pasi Kallinen to make that happen.
+
+At the time of the NetHack 5.0 release, the core development team,
+active and erstwhile, included Warwick Allison, Michael Allison,
+Ken Arromdee, David Cohrs, Jessie Collet, Bart House, Kevin Hugo,
+Pasi Kallinen, Ken Lorber, Dean Luick, Pat Rankin, Derek S. Ray,
+Alex Smith, Patric Mueller, Mike Stephenson, Janet Walz, Paul Winner.
+
+Ken Lorber, Pat Rankin, Patrick Mueller and Michael Allison helped ensure
+that NetHack 5.0 would run on macOS.
+
+Ingo Paschke somehow managed to revive a NetHack 5.0 port for the Amiga,
+using a cross-compiler on a modern platform to do so. His work was shared
+so others can straightforwardly produce NetHack 5.0 for the Amiga thanks
+to his efforts.
+
+Ray Chason contributed the majority of maintenance work for the NetHack 5.0
+MS-DOS port, including porting the curses interface to it.
+Michael Allison ensured that NetHack 5.0 core changes continued to work
+with the msdos port and keep it alive.  Cross-compiling the MS-DOS port
+has helped make that possible and mostly painless.
+
+People that contributed to the Windows port of NetHack 5.0 since the
+development of NetHack 5.0 begain over eleven years ago, included
+Michael Allison, David Cohrs, Bart House, Pasi Kallinen, Alex Kompel,
+Dion Nicolaas, Derek S. Ray and Yitzhak Sapir.
+
+With sadness, the devteam would like to acknowledge and remember the past
+contributions from the late Ron Van Iwaarden, who was the sole maintainer
+of NetHack for OS/2 for several past NetHack releases. Ron will be missed.
+
 The official NetHack web site is maintained by Ken Lorber at
 https://www.nethack.org/.
 

doc/Guidebook.mn

@@ -60,7 +60,7 @@
 .ds f0 \*(vr
 .ds f1 \" empty
 .\"DO NOT REMOVE NH_DATESUB .ds f2 Date(%B %-d, %Y)
-.ds f2 May 1, 2026
+.ds f2 May 2, 2026
 .
 .\" A note on some special characters:
 .\" \(lq = left double quote
@@ -6817,7 +6817,7 @@ That's a new major release over 3.x, without opening up any ambiguity
 or confusion with existing variants that there might have been had it
 been released as version 4.0.
 .pg
-NetHack 5.0.0 was released on , 2026.
+NetHack 5.0.0 was released on May 2, 2026.
 .pg
 The source code for NetHack 5.0.0 was modified and modernized to be
 compliant with standard C99. The 5.0.0 release contained over 3100 fixes,

doc/Guidebook.tex

@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@
 \author{Original version - Eric S. Raymond\\
 (Edited and expanded for 5.0.0 by Mike Stephenson and others)}
 %DO NOT REMOVE NH_DATESUB \date{Date(%B %-d, %Y)}
-\date{May 1, 2026}
+\date{May 2, 2026}
 
 \maketitle
 
@@ -6911,7 +6911,7 @@ The syntax is the same as WIZARDS.
 %.lp
 \item[MSGHANDLER]
 A path and filename of executable.  Whenever a message-window
-message is shown, NetHack runs this program.  The program will get
+message is shown, \textit{NetHack} runs this program.  The program will get
 the message as the only parameter.
 %.lp
 \item[MAXPLAYERS]
@@ -7170,8 +7170,8 @@ subsequent revisions of 3.0.
 \medskip
 \noindent \textit{Olaf Seibert} ported \textit{NetHack} 2.3 and 3.0 to the Amiga.  {\it
 Norm Meluch}, \textit{Stephen Spackman} and \textit{Pierre Martineau} designed
-overlay code for \textit{PC NetHack} 3.0.  \textit{Johnny Lee} ported {\it
+overlay code for \textit{PC NetHack} 3.0.  \textit{Johnny Lee} ported
-NetHack} 3.0 to the Macintosh.  Along with various other Dungeoneers, they
+\textit{NetHack} 3.0 to the Macintosh.  Along with various other Dungeoneers, they
 continued to enhance the PC, Macintosh, and Amiga ports through the later
 revisions of 3.0.
 
@@ -7437,7 +7437,7 @@ official release version.
 
 %.pg
 \medskip
-In January 2015, preparation began for the release of NetHack 3.6.
+In January 2015, preparation began for the release of \textit{NetHack} 3.6.
 
 %.pg
 \medskip
@@ -7449,7 +7449,7 @@ At the beginning of development for what would eventually get released as
 \textit{Mike Stephenson}, \textit{Janet Walz}, and \textit{Paul Winner}.
 In early 2015, ahead of the release of 3.6.0, new members
 \textit{Sean Hunt}, \textit{Pasi Kallinen}, and \textit{Derek S. Ray}
-joined the \textit{NetHack} development team.
+joined the \textit{NetHack Development Team}.
 
 %.pg
 \medskip
@@ -7484,7 +7484,7 @@ maintained the port of  \textit{NetHack} 3.6 for Microsoft Windows.
 
 %.pg
 \medskip
-\textit{Pat Rankin} attempted to keep the VMS port running for NetHack 3.6,
+\textit{Pat Rankin} attempted to keep the VMS port running for \textit{NetHack} 3.6,
 hindered by limited access.  \textit{Kevin Smolkowski} has updated and tested it
 for the most recent version of OpenVMS (V8.4 as of this writing) on Alpha
 and Integrity (aka Itanium aka IA64) but not VAX.
@@ -7497,7 +7497,7 @@ necessary updates to the community at large.
 %.pg
 \medskip
 In late April 2018, several hundred bug fixes for 3.6.0 and some new features
-were assembled and released as NetHack 3.6.1.
+were assembled and released as \textit{NetHack} 3.6.1.
 The \textit{NetHack Development Team} at the
 time of release of 3.6.1 consisted of
 \textit{Warwick Allison}, \textit{Michael Allison}, \textit{Ken Arromdee},
@@ -7519,29 +7519,122 @@ for decades, joined the \textit{NetHack Development Team} in late May 2019.
 
 %.pg
 \medskip
-NetHack 3.6.3 was released on December 5, 2019 containing over 190 bug
+\textit{NetHack} 3.6.3 was released on December 5, 2019 containing over 190 bug
-fixes to NetHack 3.6.2.
+fixes to \textit{NetHack} 3.6.2.
 
 %.pg
 \medskip
-NetHack 3.6.4 was released on December 18, 2019 containing a security fix and
+\textit{NetHack} 3.6.4 was released on December 18, 2019 containing a security fix and
 a few bug fixes.
 
 %.pg
 \medskip
-NetHack 3.6.5 was released on January 27, 2020 containing some security fixes
+\textit{NetHack} 3.6.5 was released on January 27, 2020 containing some security fixes
 and a small number of bug fixes.
 
 %.pg
 \medskip
-NetHack 3.6.6 was released on March 8, 2020 containing a security fix and
+\textit{NetHack} 3.6.6 was released on March 8, 2020 containing a security fix and
 some bug fixes.
 
 %.pg
 \medskip
-NetHack 3.6.7 was released on February 16, 2023 containing a security fix and
+\textit{NetHack} 3.6.7 was released on February 16, 2023 containing a security fix and
 some bug fixes.
 
+%.pg
+\medskip
+Development work for the major release to follow \textit{NetHack} 3.6 began in 2015
+around the same time as \textit{NetHack} 3.6.0 was being released. That development
+work continued in parallel to each of the \textit{NetHack} 3.6 releases from 2015
+through 2023, and continued until the end of April 2026.  For the first time,
+that development was shared publicly on GitHub and SourceForge as it occurred.
+It was done under the label NetHack-3.7 work-in-progress (WIP), although the
+version number for the next release had not yet been solidified.
+
+%.pg
+\medskip
+Exposure of the development to the public brought many good things, and some
+challenges. People were able to observe and criticize changes and new features
+almost immediately, and they often did. The GitHub pull request system made
+it straightforward for people to contribute directly to development.
+Contributions resolved many, many bugs in the game and we thank all the
+contributors.
+
+%.pg
+\medskip
+In early 2026, with the game development getting stable enough to consider
+initiating an official release, the devteam reviewed the nature and number of
+changes in the game. It was clear that there was sufficient depth and
+breadth to warrant a major release and version 5.0 was decided on.
+That's a new major release over 3.x, without opening up any ambiguity
+or confusion with existing variants that there might have been had it
+been released as version 4.0.
+
+%.pg
+\medskip
+\textit{NetHack} 5.0.0 was released on May 2, 2026.
+
+%.pg
+\medskip
+The source code for \textit{NetHack} 5.0.0 was modified and modernized to be
+compliant with standard C99. The 5.0.0 release contained over 3100 fixes,
+changes, and updated features.
+
+%.pg
+\medskip
+\textit{NetHack} 5.0 was the first version to replace the lex and yacc level
+and dungeon compilers of past versions, with a new Lua interpreter-based
+approach to provide those elements. Lua is also used for the quest texts
+in \textit{NetHack} 5.0.0. The entire development team acknowledges the work
+done by \textit{Pasi Kallinen} to make that happen.
+\textit{Ray Chason}
+
+%.pg
+\medskip
+At the time of the \textit{NetHack} 5.0 release, the core
+\textit{NetHack Development Team},
+active and erstwhile, included \textit{Warwick Allison}, \textit{Michael Allison},
+\textit{Ken Arromdee}, \textit{David Cohrs}, \textit{Jessie Collet}, \textit{Bart House},
+\textit{Kevin Hugo}, \textit{Pasi Kallinen}, \textit{Ken Lorber}, \textit{Dean Luick},
+\textit{Pat Rankin}, \textit{Derek S. Ray}, \textit{Alex Smith}, \textit{Patric Mueller},
+\textit{Mike Stephenson}, \textit{Janet Walz}, \textit{Paul Winner}.
+
+%.pg
+\medskip
+\textit{Ken Lorber}, \textit{Pat Rankin}, \textit{Patrick Mueller} and
+\textit{Michael Allison} helped ensure that \textit{NetHack} 5.0 would run
+on macOS.
+
+%.pg
+\medskip
+\textit{Ingo Paschke} somehow managed to revive a \textit{NetHack} 5.0 port for the Amiga,
+using a cross-compiler on a modern platform to do so. His work was shared so
+others can straightforwardly produce \textit{NetHack} 5.0 for the Amiga thanks to his
+efforts.
+
+%.pg
+\medskip
+\textit{Ray Chason} contributed the majority of maintenance work for the
+\textit{NetHack} 5.0 MS-DOS port, including porting the curses interface to it.
+\textit{Michael Allison} ensured that \textit{NetHack} 5.0 core changes continued to
+work with the msdos port and keep it alive.  Cross-compiling the MS-DOS
+port has helped make that possible and mostly painless.
+
+%.pg
+\medskip
+People that contributed to the Windows port of \textit{NetHack} 5.0 since the
+development of \textit{NetHack} 5.0 begain over eleven years ago, included
+\textit{Michael Allison}, \textit{David Cohrs}, \textit{Bart House},
+\textit{Pasi Kallinen}, \textit{Alex Kompel}, \textit{Dion Nicolaas},
+\textit{Derek S. Ray} and \textit{Yitzhak Sapir}.
+
+%.pg
+\medskip
+With sadness, the devteam would like to acknowledge and remember the past
+contributions from the late \textit{Ron Van Iwaarden}, who was the sole maintainer
+of \textit{NetHack} for OS/2 for several past \textit{NetHack} releases. Ron will be missed.
+
 %.pg
 \medskip
 \noindent The official \textit{NetHack} web site is maintained by \textit{Ken Lorber} at
@@ -7553,7 +7646,7 @@ some bug fixes.
 \subsection*{Special Thanks}
 \noindent On behalf of the \textit{NetHack} community, thank you very much once
 again to \textit{M. Drew Streib} and \textit{Pasi Kallinen} for providing a
-public NetHack server at nethack.alt.org. Thanks to \textit{Keith Simpson}
+public \textit{NetHack} server at nethack.alt.org. Thanks to \textit{Keith Simpson}
 and \textit{Andy Thomson} for hardfought.org. Thanks to all those
 unnamed dungeoneers who invest their time and effort into annual
 \textit{NetHack} tournaments such as \textit{Junethack},

include/patchlevel.h

@@ -59,13 +59,18 @@
  * to individual level files matter; changes to general game state don't)
  * but the extra complexity to support that is not worth the effort.]
  */
-/*#define VERSION_COMPATIBILITY 0x03070000L*/
+/*#define VERSION_COMPATIBILITY 0x05000000L*/
 
 /****************************************************************************/
 /* Version 5.0.x */
 
 /*
- *  NetHack 5.0.0, <insert date here>
+ *  NetHack 5.0.0, May 2, 2026
+ *
+ *  Sources changed to C99.
+ *  level compiler, dungeon compiler, and quest text all replaced with
+ *    Lua alternatives.
+ *  Refer to doc/fixes5-0-0.txt for a complete list of fixes and changes.
  *
  */