Compiling (3.6.0) - Revision history

Ray Chason: /* Running the build setup script */ MS-DOS

2026-07-22T03:17:08Z

‎Running the build setup script: MS-DOS

Umbire the Phantom: todo in case I missed anything else

2026-07-22T00:43:17Z

todo in case I missed anything else

Umbire the Phantom: typo

2026-07-22T00:30:57Z

typo

Umbire the Phantom: ditto

2026-07-22T00:30:20Z

ditto

New page

{{otheruses|compiling NetHack 3.6.0|compiling NetHack 3.4.3|compiling 3.4.3}}
{{for|compiling the current version of NetHack|compiling}}
This page contains help on '''compiling NetHack 3.6''', either the officially released version (3.6.0) or the version from the development sources (as of 2016 October). Compiling is necessary if you want to try out the dev team's latest changes when they haven't released a compiled version yet, or if you want to apply a [[patch]], e.g. from the [http://bilious.alt.org/ bilious database] or make changes of your own.

==Obtaining the officially released sources==
The official released NetHack source can be found here:
https://nethack.org/v360/download-src.html

Once you have obtained the tarball, you will need to extract it, either using standard tools (<tt>tar -xvf nethack-360-src.tgz</tt>) or some other archive extractor that can handle the tar and gzip formats.

Note that if you use a graphical archive extractor like 7zip, you may have to extract twice: once to decompress the gzip and obtain the plain tar file, and a second time to extract the actual contents.

==Obtaining the development sources==
The development source repository is available at http://git.code.sf.net/p/nethack/NetHack

If you have git installed, you can retrieve a copy of the repository using either of the following commands:

<tt>git clone https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack</tt>

alternately:

<tt>git clone http://git.code.sf.net/p/nethack/NetHack</tt>

(It doesn't matter which repository you use; they're both mirrors of the public portion of the dev team's repository.)

This will create a subdirectory (a.k.a., a "folder") called 'NetHack', in the current directory, and the new subdirectory, 'NetHack', will be a git repository, containing a working copy of the latest public development source.

==Preparing to compile==
===Gathering build tools===
In order to build NetHack, you will neet at minimum the following tools:
* a C compiler (typically 'gcc' or 'clang')
* 'make' (typically Gnu 'make', and note in particular that Microsoft's 'nmake' won't work)
* 'flex' and 'bison', or some other suitable lex/yacc implementation
* common libraries (including development headers); these should be includeded if you have a complete working build environment (e.g., if you have installed build-essential on Debian-derived systems, you should have them). I don't know a complete list of all the libraries that are required, but I believe the list includes standard POSIX regular expression libraries, termcap/terminfo, and of course the standard C library. Beyond that, I'm not sure.
* any libraries (including development headers) needed for the specific ports you wish to build; if this is the first time you are building NetHack, it is recommended that you start by building the Unix TTY port first, as it is the easiest and has no additional requirements of its own beyond the ones that all the ports require.

Note that you will need copies of all these on the platform for which you are building NetHack. Cross-compiling NetHack, if even possible, is much more complicated and far beyond the scope of this article.

===Selecting a hints file===
The new build system introduced in NetHack 3.6.0 is based on "hints files", which inform the rest of the build system about various things which might differ from one system to another, and which you might wish to customize when building, even if you are making no changes to the actual game. Things like which directory to install the game's binaries into, which directory to use for storing the game data, which flags to pass to the compiler, and even basic facts like what the compiler on your system is called, are all specified in the hints file. A hints file is simply a plain text file, formatted like a shell script, that contains hints for the NetHack build system, in the form of setting variables.

You can find a collection of existing hints files in the sys/unix/hints/ directory. You may find that one of them is closer to what you want than others. For example, the 'linux' hints file is designed for a single-user install in ~/nh/install; whereas, the 'unix' hints file is designed for a traditional system-wide install in /usr. Look through the existing hints files and see if you can find one that is a close fit for your needs.

===Modifying a hints file===
If you need to combine or modify a hints file, here are some useful things to know:
* Lines starting with # are comments. You can thus prepend # to an existing line to comment it out, rendering it ineffective but leaving it there for reference.
* There are four main directories that need to be specified: 'HACKDIR', 'SHELLDIR', 'INSTDIR', and 'VARDIR'. These are often based on a 'PREFIX' directory, which is not itself used directly for anything, but the others are typically located inside of it.
* The CHOWN and CHGRP variables should contain the commands used to change ownership and group-ownership of files, respectively. Setting it to a command that doesn't do anything (such as 'yes' or 'true', as the stock 'linux' hints file does) will result in permissions not being changed, which is typically not what you want except possibly for a single-user install. If you are modifying the 'linux' hints file to build on a Linux system, you will probably want to change these lines.
* The WINSRC, WINOBJ, and WINLIB lines control which window port you will build. If this is your first time compiling NetHack, it is recommended to start with the TTY port, which is easiest to build successfully.

==Running the build setup script==
Once you have selected and possibly modified a hints file, you are almost ready to run the setup script. Run "make fetch-lua".

Then on most platforms, setup is done with the following command:
<tt>sys/unix/setup.sh sys/unix/hints/whichever_hints_file_you_are_using</tt>

On non-Unix platforms, the setup process may be slightly different. See the documentation for your platform. The setup script should copy the needed build-system files (e.g., makefiles) into place and modify them as needed.

===Windows===
For Nethack 3.6 on Windows, it's a good idea to follow the instructions inside <tt>sys\winnt\Install.nt</tt>. The following assumes that you have your compiler and coreutils from projects such as MinGW and GnuWin32.

* Navigate to <tt>sys\winnt</tt> and run <tt>nhsetup.bat</tt>.

* Navigate to <tt>src</tt> and edit <tt>Makefile.gcc</tt>.

* Inside the Makefile, you're going to want to edit or check the following things:
** Do you want the outputted binary to belong in <tt>..\binary</tt>, or somewhere else?
** Are you compiling for a specific architecture (x86 or x64)? If so, edit <tt>TARGET_CPU</tt>.
** Do you want Curses window port support? If so, uncomment <tt>ADD_CURSES=Y</tt> and make sure that you've cloned the PDCurses repository from https://github.com/wmcbrine/PDCurses.
** TODO: (Test this, I only wanted the terminal interface) Do you want Qt support? You're going to want to change this option and specify the location of the Qt directory.
** On Line 484, are the compiler macros set up correctly? Mine were not, as Chocolatey links the compilers to standard <tt>gcc</tt> filenames instead of <tt>mingw32-gcc.exe</tt>. Comment out the <tt>#ifndef</tt> directive and specify the compilers.

* Make with your <tt>make</tt> program. For me, the invocation was <tt>mingw32-make -f Makefile.gcc install</tt>. Note that if you don't specify the <tt>-f Makefile.gcc</tt> option, you'll get an error, as the standard <tt>Makefile</tt> is for Visual Studio's <tt>nmake</tt> program.

==Compiling==
At this point, you may be able to just run the 'make' command and get a working build.

==Installing==
If the build goes well, you can (as root/superuser if necessary, or with sudo) use the 'make install' command to install your newly compiled NetHack.

==Creating the system config file==
When you try to run your new build, it will complain that there is no syscf file and refuse to do anything until you create that file. The syscf file is allowed to be empty; it just has to exist. Simply create an empty file named sysconf in your HACKDIR and nethack will run normally.

Depending on which hints file you used, some permissions may need to be changed before the game can be run as a regular user.
{{noversion}}
[[Category:Development]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 03:17, 22 July 2026
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	* Make with your <tt>make</tt> program. For me, the invocation was <tt>mingw32-make -f Makefile.gcc install</tt>. Note that if you don't specify the <tt>-f Makefile.gcc</tt> option, you'll get an error, as the standard <tt>Makefile</tt> is for Visual Studio's <tt>nmake</tt> program.		* Make with your <tt>make</tt> program. For me, the invocation was <tt>mingw32-make -f Makefile.gcc install</tt>. Note that if you don't specify the <tt>-f Makefile.gcc</tt> option, you'll get an error, as the standard <tt>Makefile</tt> is for Visual Studio's <tt>nmake</tt> program.
		+
		+	===On MS-DOS===
		+
		+	MS-DOS support is broken for 3.6.0 only. It might work for a text-only build, but the [[tileset]] expanded the palette to allow each [[statue]] type to display a unique tile. 3.6.1 fixes these problems, providing limited support for VESA BIOS Extensions and disabling the new statue tiles when running in 16 color VGA mode.
		+
		+	These instructions were tested with [[NetHack 3.6.7]].
		+
		+	NetHack 3.6 does not support cross-compiling. DJGPP is painfully slow on DOSBox. These instructions were tested on [https://freedos.org/ FreeDOS] 1.4 running on [https://virtualbox.org/ VirtualBox] 7.0.20 running on Linux Mint. The DOSLFN program is installed by default in this version; the compile can be done either with or without DOSLFN.
		+
		+	====DJGPP components needed====
		+
		+	Create a directory C:\djgpp and unpack the following zip files into it:
		+
		+	* From [https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2/ v2]:
		+	** [https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2/djdev205.zip djdev205.zip]
		+	* From [https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2gnu/ v2gnu]:
		+	** [https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2gnu/bnu2351b.zip bnu2351b.zip]
		+	** [https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2gnu/fil41br3.zip fil41br3.zip]
		+	** [https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2gnu/gcc142b.zip gcc142b.zip]
		+	** [https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2gnu/mak44b.zip mak44b.zip]
		+
		+	Flex and byacc are untested at this writing, but are available as follows:
		+	* From [https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2apps/ v2apps]:
		+	** [https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2apps/byacc19br2.zip byacc19br2.zip]
		+	* From [https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2gnu/ v2gnu]:
		+	** [https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2gnu/flx254br2.zip flx254br2.zip]
		+	** [https://www.delorie.com/pub/djgpp/current/v2gnu/m4-1419b.zip m4-1419b.zip]
		+
		+	Versions listed here are current as of 21 July 2026.
		+
		+	A few packages may ask you to verify overwriting a file. It does not matter whether you overwrite or not.
		+
		+	Add <code>C:\djgpp\bin</code> to the PATH and create an environment variable <code>DJGPP=C:\djgpp\djgpp.env</code>.
		+
		+	====PDCurses====
		+
		+	The Makefile points to <code>..\..\pdcurses</code> as the location for PDCurses. If the NetHack source is under C:\NETHACK.367, then PDCurses will be in C:\PDCURSES.
		+
		+	====Preparation====
		+
		+	Unpack the NetHack source distribution on C:. You may want to rename the root to something like NETHACK.367.
		+
		+	From the <code>sys\\msdos</code> directory, run <code>setup GCC</code>. Support for real mode was fully dropped in this version.
		+
		+	Go to <code>src</code> and edit the Makefile.
		+
		+	Look for a line that reads
		+	-$(subst /,\,@if not exist $(OBJ)/. mkdir $(OBJ))
		+	and change it to read
		+	-$(subst /,\,@if not exist $(OBJ)/nul mkdir $(OBJ))
		+
		+	The system will hang if you don't do this and the <code>src\\o</code> directory already exists.
		+
		+	Look for a line that reads
		+	@$(subst /,\,copy ../sys/winnt/sysconf $(GAMEDIR))
		+	and change it to read
		+	@$(subst /,\,copy ../sys/winnt/syscon. $(GAMEDIR)/sysconf)
		+
		+	Otherwise, the sysconf file will not be copied, and NetHack will refuse to run without it.
		+
		+	Flex and byacc are disabled out of the box. Instructions for running them are untested at this writing.
		+
		+	====Building====
		+
		+	Run <code>make</code> from the command line. The build will take about 15 minutes; DJGPP is quite slow when building natively under FreeDOS.
		+
		+	This will produce the NetHack distribution in a newly created <code>binary</code> directory.

	==Compiling==		==Compiling==

@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 This page contains help on '''compiling NetHack 3.6''', either the officially released version (3.6.0) or the version from the development sources (as of 2016 October).  Compiling is necessary if you want to try out the dev team's latest changes when they haven't released a compiled version yet, or if you want to apply a [[patch]], e.g. from the [http://bilious.alt.org/ bilious database] or make changes of your own.
 ==Obtaining the officially released sources==
 The official released NetHack source can be found here:

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{otheruses|compiling NetHack 3.6.0|compiling NetHack 3.4.3|compiling 3.4.3}}
+{{otheruses|compiling NetHack 3.6.0|compiling NetHack 3.4.3|compiling (3.4.3)}}
 {{for|compiling the current version of NetHack|compiling}}
 This page contains help on '''compiling NetHack 3.6''', either the officially released version (3.6.0) or the version from the development sources (as of 2016 October).  Compiling is necessary if you want to try out the dev team's latest changes when they haven't released a compiled version yet, or if you want to apply a [[patch]], e.g. from the [http://bilious.alt.org/ bilious database] or make changes of your own.