README.MINGW32

To build bzflag on Windows Intel you can use MinGW and MSYS, both Open Source
and freely available from http://www.mingw.org

There's a troubleshooting section at the end of this file in case you run into
problems.

*** Part I: Obtain MingW and MSYS

MinGW stands for Minimalistic GNU for Windows
  it is a collection of library, header and a collection of GNU tools
MSYS stands for Minimal SYStem
  it gives the ability to run shell based program (like configure)
The MSYS DTK stands for the Developer's Toolkit
  it lets you use GNU autotools, and other utilities, on windows

MinGW gives the ability to generate a truly native windows program, without any
posix layer emulation (like the one in use by cygwin).

Now, to build bzflag, you have to procure MinGW and MSYS. Get the
whole MinGW, including the MSYS DTK (Development ToolKit), follow the instruction
to install it and stay updated.

*** Part II: Obtain necessary platform files

If you would like to build BZAdmin in curses mode, you need to download PDCurses
from http://pdcurses.sourceforge.net/.  Build it according to their instructions
for MingW, and rename the resulting library from pdcurses.a to libpdcurses.a.
Then copy libpdcurses.a and curses.h to the appropriate subdirectories of your
MingW32 install (lib and include respectively).

If you want to build using SDL support, you should get SDL at libsdl.org and
follow their instructions to install it under MinGW before configuring bzflag.
Then move on to Part III.  This is the suggested way of building BZFlag.

If you want to build without using SDL, you have to get yourself a couple of
header files to interface the MS DirectX subsystem. They are normally part
of any Microsoft development kit; you can get from your Visual C installation
if you have one, or from MSDN on internet.
Any way you got these files, you should copy either on the MinGW installation,
under the include directory or, if you don't like to clutter the MinGW
installation, just put under src/platform.

The files in question are dsound.h, dinput.h and ddraw.h.

To get the needed DirectX header files from the Microsoft DirectX SDK:
    * Go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/
    * Select the DirectX 9.0 Software Development Kit
    * Click on the Download link on the right
    * This is a 227 MB file!
    * Run the downloaded program
    * Click Unzip to extract it to the default location (C:\mssdk\temp)
    * Click "OK" and "Close" when the program finishes extracting the files
    * Copy ddraw.h, dinput.h and dsound.h from the SDK's include directory

Note that we cannot redistribute these files separate of the entire SDK.

*** Part III: Obtain BZFlag

Make sure that your BZFlag sources have correct line endings.  Use the source
tarballs rather than zipfiles if you're building from a release.  If you are
using subversion, the line endings should be correct automatically except for
src/date/buildDate.cxx, which you will need to convert with dos2unix or a
similar tool before attempting to run ./configure.

It's easiest to check out BZFlag into a subdirectory of wherever you installed
MSYS, such as <MSYS>/bzflag.

*** Part IV: Compile and Install BZFlag

Once you have the files checked out correctly, you should run this command

sh autogen.sh

from the top bzflag directory, from inside the MSYS shell (run msys.bat from
the MSYS directory).

You should have all the automake, autoconf, m4, perl stuff - they
are in DTK kit.  They may not be up to date; there are sometimes more updated
versions available if autogen refuses to run.

If you are able to find a bzflag dist kit, just run the configure script,
looking at the help (configure --help) for options.

Then run

./configure (with any desired arguments, such as --without-sdl)
make
make install

Compiled executable files are found in src/bzflag (bzflag.exe), src/bzfs/bzfs
(bzfs.exe), and src/bzadmin (bzadmin.exe).

When you are confident of the compilation result you can run make install and
then make a link to the application (e.g. on your Desktop) to run this bejoux.


--- Troubleshooting:

Q. When I run autogen.sh, I get a message like "sh: aclocal: command not found"
A. aclocal and associated programs are part of the GNU autotools package.  This
   is included in the MSYS Developer's Tool Kit (DTK), which can be downloaded
   from http://www.mingw.org.  BZFlag requires the autotools to build.

Q. When I run ./configure, it reports "No C Compiler found" or similar.
A. Make sure you install MingW32 before MSYS, and when installing MSYS, be sure
   to tell it where MingW32 is.  If this does not work (or you don't want
   to reinstall), copy the MingW32 directory into the MSYS directory as mingw.
   E.g. if you have MingW installed to c:\MingW32 and MSYS to c:\msys\1.0, copy
   the MingW32 directory to c:\msys\1.0 and rename it mingw, so you have
   c:\msys\1.0\mingw with all the MingW files in it.

Q. When I run ./configure, sed dumps the contents of version.h, configure
   continues normally for a while, and then I get repeated sed errors like
   "sed: <file>: unterminated `s' command" and others.  Make fails with
   "*** No targets.  Stop." or similar.
A. When checking out the bzflag sources from a git clone, you must check them
   out with UNIX line breaks. If you're using a source package, you need to use
   the tarball (.tar.bz2) not the zip package.  You can extract it from within
   MSYS with "bunzip2 <file>" and "tar -xvf <file>".

Q. When I run make, it reports an error about not being able to find dsound.h.
A. Follow the above directions to get the needed DirectX headers from the MS DX SDK,
   or follow the above instructions for "If you want to build using SDL support"

Q. I get errors not mentioned in this file.
A. File a support request at https://github.com/BZFlag-Dev/bzflag/issues/ or
   jump on #bzflag on irc.libera.chat and ask for help compiling on MingW.  Be
   sure to include the first few lines of error if you file a support request.