- Prerequisites
- Build Environment
- SCons Build
- CMake Build
- Build Options
Wesnoth requires a compiler with sufficient C++14 support such as GCC 5.0 and later, or Clang 3.8 and later.
You'll need to have these libraries and their development headers installed in order to build Wesnoth:
- Boost libraries >= 1.56.0
Most headers plus the following binary libs:
- Filesystem
- Locale
- Iostreams
- Random
- Regex
- Program Options
- System
- Thread
- SDL2 libraries:
- SDL2 >= 2.0.4
- SDL2_image >= 2.0.0 (with PNG and JPEG support)
- SDL2_mixer >= 2.0.0 (with Ogg Vorbis support)
- SDL2_ttf >= 2.0.12
- Fontconfig >= 2.4.1
- Cairo >= 1.10.0
- Pango >= 1.22.0 (with Cairo backend)
- Vorbisfile
- libbz2
- libz
- libcrypto (from OpenSSL)
The following libraries are optional dependencies that enable additional features:
-
D-Bus (libdbus-1): Desktop notifications on Linux, *BSD, etc.
-
GNU history (libreadline): Command history and history expansion in the built-in Lua console.
-
FriBiDi >= 0.10.9: Bidirectional text support for RTL languages (Hebrew, etc.) in some parts of the user interface.
You can obtain the source code tarball for the latest version from https://www.wesnoth.org/downloads.
Before building, make sure to untar the package and change into the newly created directory:
$ tar xvjf wesnoth-<version>.tar.bz2
$ cd wesnoth-<version>
Or:
$ tar xvzf wesnoth-<version>.tar.gz
$ cd wesnoth-<version>
The following build systems are fully supported for compiling Wesnoth on Linux, *BSD, and other Unix-like platforms:
- SCons >= 0.98.3
- CMake >= 2.8.5
You will also need to have a working installation of GNU gettext to build the translations.
While Wesnoth may be easily installed system-wide using SCons or CMake, it is also possible to run it directly from the source directory after building. This may be useful in situations where you don't have root access or need to rebuild Wesnoth frequently (i.e. for development and testing).
For Windows users, a Visual C++ 2013 solution is included in projectfiles/VC12. For OS X users, an XCode project is included in projectfiles/XCode.
Unlike CMake or the classic "autotools" build-system (configure && make), configuration and building are done in the same step with SCons.
Simply type scons
in the top-level directory to build the game client and
MP server:
$ scons
It is possible to select individual targets to build by naming them in the command line separated by spaces.
To build the game client only:
$ scons wesnoth
Building the MP server only:
$ scons wesnothd
The install
target will install any binaries that were previously compiled
(use su or sudo if necessary to write files into the installation prefix):
# scons install
SCons takes a prefix=
argument that specifies where to install the game and
its resource files. The prefix defaults to /usr/local
; for production builds,
you may wish to use /usr
instead:
$ scons prefix=/usr
Unlike SCons, CMake has separate configuration and build steps. Configuration
is done using CMake itself, and the actual build is done using make
.
There are two ways to build Wesnoth with CMake: inside the source tree or outside of it. Out-of-source builds have the advantage that you can have multiple builds with different options from one source directory.
To build Wesnoth out of source:
$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
$ make
To build Wesnoth in the source directory:
$ cmake . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
$ make
To install Wesnoth after building (as root using su or sudo if necessary):
# make install
To change build options, you can either pass the options on the command line:
$ cmake .. -DOPTION_NAME=option_value
Or use either the ccmake
or cmake-gui
front-ends, which display all options
and their cached values on a console and graphical UI, respectively.
$ ccmake ..
$ cmake-gui ..
A full list of options supported by SCons along with their descriptions and
defaults is available by running scons --help
from the Wesnoth source. For
CMake, you may either run the ccmake
or cmake-gui
front-ends, or run
cmake
and open the generated CMakeCache.txt from the build directory in a
text editor.
$ scons option_name1=option_value1 [option_name2=option_value2 [...]]
$ cmake -DOPTION_NAME1=option_value1 [-DOPTION_NAME2=option_value2 [...]]
With SCons, boolean options take yes
or true
for a true value, and no
or
false
for a false value. CMake uses ON
for a true value, and OFF
for a
false value.
Some of the most important options follow.
-
build= (SCons) CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE= (CMake)
Selects a specific build configuration when compiling.
release
produces the default, optimized (-O3) build for regular use.debug
produces a slower and larger unoptimized (-O0) build with full debug symbols, which is often needed for obtaining detailed backtraces when reporting bugs. -
ENABLE_GAME= (CMake)
Whether to build the game client binary. Use command line target selection selection with SCons instead.
-
ENABLE_SERVER= (CMake)
Whether to build the MP server binary. Use command line target selection selection with SCons instead.
-
prefix= (SCons) CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX= (CMake)
Installation prefix for binaries, resources, and documentation files.
-
nls= (SCons) ENABLE_NLS= (CMake)
Whether to compile and install translations.
-
strict= (SCons) ENABLE_STRICT_COMPILATION= (CMake)
Whether to treat compiler warnings as errors or not. Primarily intended for developers.
-
prefsdir= (SCons) PREFERENCES_DIR= (CMake)
Hardcoded user preferences and user data directory. The default is to leave this unspecified so that Wesnoth will use separate XDG paths such as .config/wesnoth and .local/share/wesnoth/ for its user preferences and data, respectively.
-
cxxtool= (SCons) CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER= (CMake)
Specifies which C++ compiler to use. By default, the system's default C++ compiler will be automatically selected during configuration.
-
ccache= (SCons)
Whether to run the compiler through ccache first. Useful if the compiler executable is not a symbolic link to ccache. Requires ccache to be installed first.
If using CMake, use CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER instead.
-
extra_flags_= (SCons) extra_flags_config= (SCons) CXX_FLAGS_USER= (CMake)
Additional compiler flags to use when compiling a specific build type (SCons-only). To apply the same flags to all builds, use extra_flags_config (SCons) or CXX_FLAGS_USER (CMake) without a build type suffix.
Alternatively, you may specify your flags in the CXXFLAGS environment variable.
-
fifodir= (SCons) FIFO_DIR= (CMake)
server_uid= server_gid= (SCons) SERVER_UID= SERVER_GID= (CMake)
Directory and owner id for the wesnothd control FIFO file. This is relevant only if you wish to be able to communicate with a local wesnothd instance through a named pipe. You must run wesnothd with the same UID specified at build time for this to work.