Copyright (c) NetHack Development Team 1990-2020 NetHack may be freely redistributed. See license for details. ============================================================== Instructions for compiling and installing NetHack 3.7 on a Windows system (Windows 7/8.x/10 or later only) ============================================================== Last revision: $NHDT-Date: 1594155895 2020/07/07 21:04:55 $ 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 3.7.0. 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 a copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 Community Edition OR o (Untested for 3.7) 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. /---------------------------------------------\ | Directories for a Win32 NetHack build | \---------------------------------------------/ (NetHack-top) | +-----+-----+------+------+-----+----------+---------~---------+ | | | | | | | | util dat doc include src sys win lib (external) | | | +----+ +------+ +-----------+ | | | | | | share winnt tty win32 Lua-5.4.3 pdcurses | vs /--------------------------------------------------------\ | Building And Running Using Visual Studio 2017 or 2019 | \--------------------------------------------------------/ Before proceeding, please obtain the lua-5.4.3 sources and copy them to the new directory lib\lua-5.4.3\src. This source can be obtained either from http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.4.3.tar.gz or from the git hub mirror https://github.com/lua/lua.git using the tag 'v5.4.3'. The build expects to find lua files such as 'lua.h' at 'lib\lua-5.4.3\src\lua.h'. If you are NOT using Visual Studio 2017 or 2019 IDE, or you prefer to build using a Make utility and a Makefile proceed to "Building Using Make". When using either Visual Studio 2017 or 2019, 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 NetHack solution file can be found here: win\win32\vs\NetHack.sln Before executing the steps to build listed in the next paragraph, decide if you want to include optional curses window-port. See the note just below entitled "Optional curses window-port support." So the steps are: 1. Launch the IDE. 2. Open the appropriate solution file. 3. Select the build configuration you wish to use (Release, Debug, etc.). 4. From the build menu, select build solution. 5. 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. Open a developer command prompt for the version of Visual Studio you are using. Change to the directory win\win32\vs and run "build.bat". * Optional curses window-port support * Since 3.6.2, the community patch for a window-port that uses curses has been incorporated into the NetHack source code tree. That window-port, which evolved from work originally done by Karl Garrison, has been used in several NetHack variants and on nethack.alt.org and on www.hardfought.org/nethack/. If you want to include the curses window-port support in your Visual Studio build, you will have to first obtain the PDCurses sources from https://github.com/wmcbrine/PDCurses and have them available prior to building NetHack. There are two ways to enable curses window-port support during the VS build: Either set the environment variable PDCURSES to a folder containing a PDCurses repository/source-tree OR Place the PDCurses folder alongside the NetHack source repository prior to proceeding with steps 1 through 5 above. /-------------------------------------------\ | Building From the Command Line Using Make | \-------------------------------------------/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Beginning of prerequisite step -- 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." -- end of prerequisite step -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 3.7.0 release have not yet 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 2017 or 2019 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. Since 3.6.2, the community patch for an optional curses window-port has been incorporated into the NetHack source code tree. That window-port, which evolved from work originally done by Karl Garrison, has been used in several NetHack variants and on nethack.alt.org and on www.hardfought.org/nethack/. The optional curses window-port is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix (and also DOS). If you want to include the optional curses window-port support in your command line Makefile build, you will have to first obtain the PDCurses sources from https://github.com/wmcbrine/PDCurses and have that source code tree available prior to building NetHack. Edit your Makefile and in Question 4 of the four decisions you can make in there, uncomment these two lines: ADD_CURSES=Y PDCURSES_TOP=..\..\pdcurses Adjust the PDCURSES_TOP macro so that it points to the correct location for the top of the PDCurses source tree if it differs from the path shown. 3. Make sure all the necessary files are in the appropriate directory structure. You should have a main NetHack top directory with subdirectories dat, doc, include, src, sys\share, sys\winnt, win\tty, util. If you are including the optional Curses window port into your build,then you will need the top of the PDCurses sources in a folder parallel to the top of the NetHack folder (or you will need to change the value of the PDCURSES_TOP macro in the Makefile to specify the appropriate location. (You can check the file "Files" in your top level directory for a more complete listing of what file is in which directory.) 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. 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. Note that saved games are NOT compatible between the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions at this time. 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!