Copyright (c) NetHack Development Team 1990-2018 NetHack may be freely redistributed. See license for details. ============================================================== Instructions for compiling and installing NetHack 3.6 on a Windows system (Windows 7/8.x/10 or later only. XP may work but is untested) ============================================================== Last revision: $NHDT-Date: 1524317622 2018/04/21 13:33:42 $ Credit for the porting of NetHack to the Win32 Console Subsystem goes to the NT Porting Team started by Michael Allison. Credit for the Win32 Graphical version of NetHack (aka "NetHack for Windows" or NetHackW) goes to Alex Kompel who initially developed and contributed the port. Alex Kompel, Dion Nicolaas, Yitzhak Sapir, Derek S. Ray, Michael Allison, Pasi Kallinen, Bart House, and Janet Walz contributed to the maintainance of the tty and graphical windows versions of NetHack 3.6.1. You can build a TTY version of NetHack and a Windows Graphical version. You can use one of the following build environments: o A copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition OR Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Express OR o (Untested for 3.6) A copy of MinGW. MinGW is a collection of header files and import libraries with which native Windows32 programs can be built; the MinGW distribution contains the GNU Compiler Collection. You can download MinGW at http://www.mingw.org/ Earlier versions of MinGW will not allow you to build the Windows Graphical version. /--------------------------------------------------------\ | Building And Running Using Visual Studio 2015 or | | Visual Studio 2017 | \--------------------------------------------------------/ If you are NOT using Visual Studio 2015 or Visual Studio 2017 IDE, or you prefer to build using a Make utility and a Makefile proceed to "Building Using Make". When using either Visual Studio 2015 or Visual Studio 2017, you simply need to load the solution file within the IDE, build the solution and run the version of NetHack you wish to run. The Visual Studio 2015 NetHack solution file can be found here: win\win32\vs2015\NetHack.sln The Visual Studio 2017 NetHack solution file can be found here: win\win32\vs2017\NetHack.sln So the steps are: 1. Launch the IDE. 2. Open the appropriate solution file. 3. If you have a newer version of Visual Studio than what was used to build the solution and project files distributed with the NetHack sources, you can easily retarget the solution before the next step. Refer to the "Note about the Windows SDK version" a couple of paragraphs below. 4. Select the build configuration you wish to use (Release, Debug, etc.). 5. From the build menu, select build solution. 6. Type F5 to start debugging. You can also build all the projects for all platforms and configurations using a "build.bat" batch file found in the same directory as the solution. Change to the appropriate directory (i.e. win\win32\vs2015 for VS2015 builds, win\win32\vs2017 for VS2017 builds) and run "build.bat". ----------------------------------- Note about the Windows SDK Version: ----------------------------------- The Visual Studio project files distributed for NetHack 3.6.1 are configured for the Windows SDK version 10.0.15063.0. At the time of writing, the Windows SDK version that is distributed with VS2017 Community Edition is a newer 10.0.16299.0. If you have a build error MSB8036, you will simply need to change the expected SDK version as follows: o Open the solution in the IDE and in the project property pages, right-click the solution and select "Retarget solution". /-----------------------------------\ | Building Using Make | \-----------------------------------/ The first step in building either version of NetHack via Makefile is to execute sys\winnt\nhsetup.bat to move some files to their required locations. From the command prompt: cd sys\winnt nhsetup From a Windows explorer window: double-click on nhsetup.bat If you wish to build from the command line, proceed to "BUILDING FROM THE COMMAND LINE." /--------------------------------\ | BUILDING FROM THE COMMAND LINE | \--------------------------------/ Two different versions of NetHack will be built for Windows from the command line using the Makefile approach: A tty port utilizing the Win32 Console I/O subsystem, Console NetHack; A Win32 native port built on the Windows API, Graphical NetHack or NetHackW. The executable for Console NetHack will be named NetHack.exe. The executable for Graphical NetHack will be named NetHackW.exe. The Makefile configuration will build both; NetHackW.exe and NetHack.exe will be able to use the same datafiles, save files and bones files. Since the last official release of NetHack, compilers and computer architectures have evolved and you can now choose whether to build a 32-bit x86 version, or a 64-bit x64 version. The default Makefile is set up for a 32-bit x86 version, but that's only because it will run on the most number of existing Windows environments. NetHack's save files and bones files in the 3.6.1 release have not evolved enough to allow them to interchange between the 32-bit version and the 64-bit version (or between different platforms). Hopefully that will change in an upcoming release. I. Dispelling the Myths: Compiling NetHack for Windows is not as easy as it sounds, nor as hard as it looks, however it will behoove you to read this entire section through before beginning the task. We have provided a Makefile for each of the following compilers: o Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 or 2017 C++ Compiler The Community Editions are fine and available at no cost o MinGW 2.0 (with GCC 3.2) The Microsoft Visual Studio makefile was created for use with MS NMAKE which is provided with the Microsoft compiler. The supplied Makefile may work with earlier versions of the Microsoft compiler, but that has not been tested. The GCC Makefile was created for use with GNU Make version 3.79.1, which comes with the MinGW package. You may find it useful to obtain copies of lex (flex) and yacc (bison, or byacc). While not strictly necessary to compile nethack, they are required should you desire to make any changes to the level and dungeon compilers. II. To compile your copy of NetHack on a Windows machine: Setting Up 1. It almost goes without saying that you should make sure that your tools are set up and running correctly. That includes ensuring that all the necessary environment variables for the compiler environment are set correctly. Change your current directory to the src subfolder of the nethack source tree. cd src GCC For the GCC Makefile, add \bin to your path, where is your MinGW root directory.). Change your current directory to src subfolder of the nethack source tree. cd src 2. Make sure all the NetHack files are in the appropriate directory structure. You should have a main directory with subdirectories dat, doc, include, src, sys\share, sys\winnt, util, and binary (The "binary" directory was created by nhsetup.bat earlier if you followed the steps appropriately). For Console NetHack you need win\tty in addition to these; for Graphical NetHack you need win\win32 in addition to these. Other subdirectories may also be included in your distribution, but they are not necessary for building the TTY version for the Win32 console subsystem. You can delete them to save space. Required Directories for a Win32 Console NetHack: top | ----------------------------------------------------/ /----- | | | | | | | | util dat doc include src sys win binary | | ------ ----- | | | share winnt tty Required Directories for a Win32 Graphical NetHack: top | ----------------------------------------------------/ /----- | | | | | | | | util dat doc include src sys win binary | | ------ ----- | | | share winnt win32 Check the file "Files" in your top level directory for a more complete listing of what file is in which directory. In order for the Makefiles to work, all the source files must be in the proper locations. If you downloaded or ftp'd the sources from a UNIX system, the lines will probably end in UNIX-style newlines, instead of the carriage return and line feed pairs used by Windows. Some programs have trouble with them, so you may need to convert them. The compiler should not have any problems with them however. 3. Now go to the include subdirectory to check a couple of the header files there. Things *should* work as they are, but since you have probably set up your system in some sort of custom configuration it doesn't hurt to check out the following: First check config.h according to the comments to match your system and desired set of features. Mostly you need to check section 4 and 5. You may include all or as few of the special game features as you wish (they are located last in the file). 4. Edit your Makefile if you wish, but it is not required unless you are altering the build options. If you are recompiling after patching your sources, or if you got your files from somewhere other than the official distribution, "touch makedefs.c" to ensure that certain files (onames.h and pm.h) are remade, lest potentially troublesome timestamps fool your make (or nmake) utility. Compiling 5. Now that everything is set up... For the Visual Studio compiler, as mentioned above, you should now be at the command prompt to carry out the build and your current directory should be the src subdirectory in the NetHack source tree. In the src subdirectory, issue this command: nmake install For GCC: Change your current directory to the NetHack src directory. Issue this command: mingw32-make -f Makefile.gcc install If you get any errors along the way then something has not been set up correctly. The time it takes to compile depends on your particular machine of course, but you should be able to go for lunch and return to find everything finished. The less memory, and slower your machine, the longer the lunch you may take. :-) In any case, it is likely that the command prompt window where you are doing the compiling will be occupied for a while. If all goes well, you will get an NetHack executable. Notes: 1. To install an update of NetHack after changing something, change your current directory to src and issue the appropriate command for your compiler: For Microsoft compiler: nmake For GCC: mingw32-make -f Makefile.gcc If you add, delete, or reorder monsters or objects, or you change the format of saved level files, delete any save and bones files. (Trying to use such files sometimes produces amusing confusions on the game's part, but usually crashes.) If you made changes to any of the level compiler software, you may have to delete dgn_flex.c, dgn_yacc.c, lev_flex.c, and lev_yacc.c from the util directory to ensure that they are remade. 2. Depending on the build and compiler and tools used above, the executable produced by the TTY build is either: - a 32-bit (x86), flat-address space, non-overlayed .exe file, which should run on any recent Win32 environment. or - a 64-bit (x64) .exe file, which should run on any 64-bit Windows O/S. NetHack.exe is the tty version. NetHackW.exe is the graphical version. Play NetHack. PROBLEMS If you discover a bug and wish to report it, or if you have comments or suggestions we recommend using our "Contact Us" web page at: http://www.nethack.org/common/contact.html If you don't have access to the web, or you want to send us a patch to the NetHack source code feel free to drop us a line c/o: DevTeam (at) nethack.org Happy NetHacking!