Compiling

This page contains help on compiling NetHack from source.

On Windows

This was tested on Win2k.

• Download NetHack's sources from http://nethack.org/v343/download-src.html

• Download MinGW from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435 (You want the MinGW-X.Y.Z.exe installer; currently it's MinGW-5.0.3.exe)

• Install MinGW. If you use the 'minimal' installation, remember to also select the optional 'MinGW make' -component, so it gets installed. Use, say, C:\mingw\ as the path to install to.

• Unpack NetHack's sources somewhere, say, c:\nh343\. That directory should contain several subdirectories, such as src, include, win and sys. You will need WinZip or some other utility that can uncompress the package.

• Go to c:\nh343\sys\winnt\ and run nhsetup.bat

• If you want to run the graphical windows GUI, edit c:\nh343\src\makefile.gcc and change the line

#GRAPHICAL=Y

to

GRAPHICAL=Y

• Go to c:\nh343\ and create a new file called 'install.bat' with the following contents:

PATH=c:\mingw\bin
cd src
mingw32-make -f makefile.gcc install

• Run the install.bat you just created.

• The NetHack binary should now be in c:\nh343\binary\

• If you want to patch your NetHack, you should next see the article on patching.

On Linux

The following compiles the TTY-version of NetHack, with all the default settings.

• Download NetHack's sources from http://nethack.org/v343/download-src.html

• Make sure you have the development packages for ncurses installed. On debian these are called libncurses5-dev.

• Open a terminal, and cd to the directory where you downloaded the source package to.

• Unpack the NetHack sources and move to the NetHack source root directory:

tar xvzf nethack-343-src.tgz
cd nethack-3.4.3

• Execute the script that moves the Makefiles to the correct places:

sh sys/unix/setup.sh x

• Edit include/unixconf.h by changing

/* #define LINUX */

to

#define LINUX

• Edit src/Makefile by changing

WINTTYLIB = -ltermlib

to

WINTTYLIB = -lncurses

• Typing make in the NetHack source root dir should compile the binary executable.

• To install NetHack to /usr/games/, type make install while you're logged in as root. If you want to change the installation directory, you need to edit the top Makefile.

• For more information about compiling NetHack, see the sys/unix/Install.unx text file.

• If you want to patch your NetHack, you should next see the article on patching.