Compiling DFHACK

Here's how you build dfhack!

Dependencies

  • cmake
  • A compiler for building the main lib and the various tools.
  • (Linux only) Veinlook requires the wide-character ncurses library (libncursesw)
  • (Linux only) You'll need X11 dev libraries.

Building on Linux

To run in the output folder (without installing) building the library is simple. Enter the build folder, run the tools. Like this:

cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:string=Release
make

This will build the library and its tools and place them in a sub-directory bin inside your build directory.

Alternatively, you can use ccmake instead of cmake:

cd build ccmake .. make

This will show a curses-based interface that lets you set all of the extra options.

You can also use a cmake-friendly IDE like KDevelop 4 or the cmake-gui program.

To be installed into the system or packaged:

cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:string=Release \
    -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr \
    -DMEMXML_DATA_PATH:path=/usr/share/dfhack ..
make
make install

With this dfhack installs:

  • library to $CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX/lib
  • executables to $CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX/bin
  • The Memory.xml file to /usr/share/dfhack

Building on Windows

You need cmake. Get the win32 installer version from the official site: http://www.cmake.org/cmake/resources/software.html

It has the usual installer wizard thing.

Using mingw

You also need a compiler. I build dfhack using mingw. You can get it from the mingw site: http://www.mingw.org/

Get the automated installer, it will download newest version of mingw and set things up nicely.

You'll have to add C:\MinGW\ to your PATH variable.

Building

open up cmd and navigate to the dfhack\build folder, run cmake and the mingw version of make:

cd build
cmake .. -G"MinGW Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:string=Release
mingw32-make

Using MSVC

open up cmd and navigate to the dfhack\build folder, run cmake:

cd build
cmake ..

This will generate MSVC solution and project files.

Note

You are working in the /build folder. Files added to projects from within MSVC will end up there! (and that's wrong). Any changes to the build system should be done by changing the CMakeLists.txt files and running cmake!

Using some other compiler

I'm afraid you are on your own. dfhack wasn't tested with any other compiler.

Try using a different cmake generator that's intended for your tools.

Build targets

dfhack has a few build targets:

  • If you're only after the library run make dfhack.

  • make will build everything.

  • make expbench will build the expbench testing program and the library.

  • Some of the utilities and the doxygen documentation won't be normally built. You can enable them by specifying some extra CMake variables:

    BUILD_DFHACK_DOCUMENTATION - generate the documentation (really bad)
    BUILD_DFHACK_EXAMPLES      - build tools from tools/examples
    BUILD_DFHACK_PLAYGROUND    - build tools from tools/playground
    

    Example:

    cmake .. -DBUILD_DFHACK_EXAMPLES=ON
    

Build types

cmake allows you to pick a build type by changing this variable: CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE

cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:string=BUILD_TYPE

Without specifying a build type or 'None', cmake uses the CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS variable for building.

Valid an useful build types include 'Release', 'Debug' and 'RelWithDebInfo'. There are others, but they aren't really that useful.

Have fun.

Using the library as a developer

DFHack is using the zlib/libpng license. This makes it easy to link to it, use it in-source or add your own extensions. Contributing back to the dfhack repository is welcome and the right thing to do :)

Rudimentary API documentation can be built using doxygen.

Contributing to DFHack

Several things should be kept in mind when contributing to DFHack.

Coding style

DFhack uses ANSI formatting and four spaces as indentation. Line endings are UNIX. The files use UTF-8 encoding. Code not following this won't make me happy, because I'll have to fix it. There's a good chance I'll make you fix it ;)

How to get new code into DFHack

You can send patches or make a clone of the github repo and ask me on the IRC channel to pull your code in. I'll review it and see if there are any problems. I'll fix them if they are minor.

Fixes are higher in priority. If you want to work on something, but don't know what, check out http://github.com/peterix/dfhack/issues -- this is also a good place to dump new ideas and/or bugs that need fixing.

Layout for tools

Tools live in the tools/ folder. There, they are split into three categories.

distributed
these tools get distributed with binary releases and are installed by doing 'make install' on linux. They are supposed to be stable and supported. Experimental, useless, buggy or untested stuff doesn't belong here.
examples
examples are tools that aren't very useful, but show how DF and DFHack work. They should use only DFHack API functions. No actual hacking or 'magic offsets' are allowed.
playground
This is a catch-all folder for tools that aren't ready to be examples or be distributed in binary releases. All new tools should start here. They can contain actual hacking, magic values and other nasty business.

Modules - what are they?

DFHack uses modules to partition sets of features into manageable chunks. A module can have both client and server side.

Client side is the part that goes into the main library and is generally written in C++. It is exposed to the users of DFHack.

Server side is used inside DF and serves to accelerate the client modules. This is written mostly in C style.

There's a Core module that shouldn't be changed, because it defines the basic commands like reading and writing raw data. The client parts for the Core module are the various implementations of the Process interface.

A good example of a module is Maps. Named the same in both client and server, it allows accelerating the reading of map blocks.

Communication between modules happens by using shared memory. This is pretty fast, but needs quite a bit of care to not break.

Dependencies

Internal
either part of the codebase or statically linked.
External
linked as dynamic loaded libraries (.dll, .so, etc.)

If you want to add dependencies, think twice about it. All internal dependencies for core dfhack should be either public domain or require attribution at most. External dependencies for tools can be either that, or any Free Software licenses.

Current internal dependencies

tinyxml
used by core dfhack to read offset definitions from Memory.xml
md5
an implementation of the MD5 hash algorithm. Used for identifying DF binaries on Linux.
argstream
Allows reading terminal application arguments. GPL!

Current external dependencies

wide-character ncurses
used for the veinlook tool on Linux.
x11 libraries
used for sending key events on linux

Build-time dependencies

cmake
you need cmake to generate the build system and some configuration headers

Memory offset definitions

The files with memory offset definitions used by dfhack can be found in the data folder.