Copyright (c) NetHack PC Development Team 1990-2023. NetHack may be freely redistributed. See license for details. ============================================================== Instructions for compiling and installing NetHack 3.7 on a DOS system ====================================================== (or, How to make PC NetHack 3.7) Last revision: $NHDT-Date: 1596508786 2021/06/04 08:45:00 $ Credit for a runnable full PC NetHack 3.7 goes to the PC Development team of Paul Winner, Kevin Smolkowski, Michael Allison, Yitzhak Sapir, Bill Dyer, Timo Hakulinen, Yamamoto Keizo, Mike Threepoint, Mike Stephenson, Stephen White, Ken Washikita and Janet Walz. The present port is based on the previous effort of Pierre Martineau, Stephen Spackman, Steve Creps, Mike Threepoint, Mike Stephenson, Norm Meluch and Don Kneller. CONTENTS: I. Dispelling the Myths II. Compiling on Linux or macOS via cross-compiler Appendix A - Additional Notes Appendix D - Contacting Us I. Dispelling the Myths: Compiling NetHack is not as easy as it sounds, nor as hard as it looks, however it will behoove you to read this entire file through before beginning the task. II. There once was a time when people built NetHack right on their DOS machine. The arcane recipe often involved flat cylinders known as "floppy disks", much gnashing of teeth, squeezing large things into small spaces, and required the sacrifice of copious amounts of time and coffee. These days, to compile your copy of NetHack on Linux or macOS machine you can use Andrew Wu's djgpp cross-compiler from: https://github.com/andrewwutw/build-djgpp downloaded from: https://github.com/andrewwutw/build-djgpp/releases/download/v3.0/ a DOS-extender (for including in msdos packaging) from: http://sandmann.dotster.com/cwsdpmi/csdpmi7b.zip and Lua from: http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.4.6.tar.gz If you want the DOSVGA build, to support higher resolutions and Unicode symbols, you also need: pdcursesmod from: https://github.com/Bill-Gray/PDCursesMod.git (Name this lib/pdcurmod for the native build) Terminus fonts from: https://sourceforge.net/projects/terminus-font/files/terminus-font-4.49/terminus-font-4.49.1.tar.gz (Name this lib/terminus for the native build) If not, you also need: pdcurses from: https://github.com/wmcbrine/PDCurses.git - A shell script to download the above-mentioned djgpp cross-compiler and associated support pieces for either linux or macOS is available: sh sys/msdos/fetch-cross-compiler.sh That script won't install anything, it just does file fetches and stores them in subfolders of lib. The linux.370 and macOS.370 hints files are configured to find the cross-compiler there if you add CROSS_TO_MSDOS=1 on your make command line. Note: Both the fetch-cross-compiler.sh script and the msdos cross-compile and package procedures require unzip and zip to be available on your host build system. On your linux host: cd sys/unix ; sh setup.sh hints/linux.370 ; cd ../.. make fetch-lua On your macOS host: cd sys/unix ; sh setup.sh hints/macOS.370 ; cd ../.. make fetch-lua The MSDOS cross-compile can then be carried out by specifying CROSS_TO_MSDOS=1 on the make command line: make CROSS_TO_MSDOS=1 package You can explicitly include tty and curses support if desired. The default you'll end up with if you don't specify any WANT_ command line options is a tty-only cross-compile build: make WANT_WIN_TTY=1 WANT_WIN_CURSES=1 CROSS_TO_MSDOS=1 package Add WANT_DOSVGA for a curses build that supports higher resolutions, external fonts and Unicode symbols: make WANT_WIN_TTY=1 WANT_WIN_CURSES=1 CROSS_TO_MSDOS=1 WANT_DOSVGA=1 package Result: The "make package" target will bundle all of the necessary components to run NetHack on msdos into a folder: targets/msdos/pkg and then it zips the contents of that folder into: targets/msdos/nh370dos.zip Also note that building the msdos targets using the make command above, does not preclude you from building local linux or macOS targets as well. Just drop the CROSS_TO_MSDOS=1 from the make command line. That's because the cross-compiler hints additions are enclosed inside ifdef sections and won't interfere with the non-cross-compile build in that case. Appendix A - Additional Notes 1. In your game directory, review the settings in defaults.nh and adjust them according to your style of play. 2. Play NetHack. If it works, you're done! Appendix B - Common Difficulties Encountered i) The cross-compile stops with an error about "No rule to make target '../lib/djgpp/djgpp-patch/src/libc/go32/exceptn.S'" For example: make CROSS_TO_MSDOS=1 package ( cd src ; make LUA_VERSION=5.4.6 nethack ) make[1]: Entering directory '/home/johndoe/NHsource/src' mkdir -p ../targets/msdos ; make ../targets/msdos/exceptn.o ; make[2]: Entering directory '/home/johndoe/NHsource/src' make[2]: *** No rule to make target '../lib/djgpp/djgpp-patch/src/libc/go32/exceptn.S', needed by '../targets/msdos/exceptn.o'. Stop. make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/johndoe/NHsource/src' make[1]: *** [Makefile:2027: pregame] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/johndoe/NHsource/src' make: *** [Makefile:1531: nethack] Error 2 That result usually indicates that you haven't successfully run the script to fetch the cross-compiler. Try again: sh sys/msdos/fetch-cross-compiler.sh ii) The cross-compile stops with an error "libfl.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory. This indicates that your host system does not have the flex library installed, and the cross-compiler needs it to be. On Ubuntu systems, you can easily rectify this issue by just installing flex, as follows: sudo apt-get install flex Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done The following additional packages will be installed: libfl-dev libfl2 m4 Suggested packages: bison flex-doc m4-doc The following NEW packages will be installed: flex libfl-dev libfl2 m4 0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 558 kB of archives. After this operation, 1699 kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y Appendix D - Contacting the Development Team 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: https://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