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Building VCMI for Linux

  • Current baseline requirement for building is Ubuntu 20.04
  • Supported C++ compilers for UNIX-like systems are GCC 9+ and Clang 13+

Older distributions and compilers might work, but they aren't tested by Github CI (Actions)

Installing dependencies

Prerequisites

To compile, the following packages (and their development counterparts) are needed to build:

  • CMake
  • SDL2 with devel packages: mixer, image, ttf
  • zlib and zlib-devel
  • Boost C++ libraries v1.48+: program-options, filesystem, system, thread, locale
  • Recommended, if you want to build launcher or map editor: Qt 5, widget and network modules
  • Recommended, FFmpeg libraries, if you want to watch in-game videos: libavformat and libswscale. Their name could be libavformat-devel and libswscale-devel, or ffmpeg-libs-devel or similar names.
  • Optional:
    • if you want to build scripting modules: LuaJIT
    • to speed up recompilation: Ccache

On Debian-based systems (e.g. Ubuntu)

For Ubuntu and Debian you need to install this list of packages:

sudo apt-get install cmake g++ clang libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev libsdl2-mixer-dev zlib1g-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libboost-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-thread-dev libboost-program-options-dev libboost-locale-dev libboost-iostreams-dev qtbase5-dev libtbb-dev libluajit-5.1-dev liblzma-dev libsqlite3-dev qttools5-dev ninja-build ccache

Alternatively if you have VCMI installed from repository or PPA you can use:

sudo apt-get build-dep vcmi

On RPM-based distributions (e.g. Fedora)

sudo yum install cmake gcc-c++ SDL2-devel SDL2_image-devel SDL2_ttf-devel SDL2_mixer-devel boost boost-devel boost-filesystem boost-system boost-thread boost-program-options boost-locale boost-iostreams zlib-devel ffmpeg-devel ffmpeg-libs qt5-qtbase-devel tbb-devel luajit-devel liblzma-devel libsqlite3-devel fuzzylite-devel ccache

NOTE: fuzzylite-devel package is no longer available in recent version of Fedora, for example Fedora 38. It's not a blocker because VCMI bundles fuzzylite lib in its source code.

On Arch-based distributions

On Arch-based distributions, there is a development package available for VCMI on the AUR.

It can be found at https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/vcmi-git/

Information about building packages from the Arch User Repository (AUR) can be found at the Arch wiki.

On NixOS or Nix

On NixOS or any system with nix available, it is recommended to use nix-shell. Create a shell.nix file with the following content:

with import <nixpkgs> {};
stdenv.mkDerivation {
  name = "build";
  nativeBuildInputs = [ cmake ];
  buildInputs = [
    cmake clang clang-tools llvm ccache ninja
    boost zlib minizip xz
    SDL2 SDL2_ttf SDL2_net SDL2_image SDL2_sound SDL2_mixer SDL2_gfx
    ffmpeg tbb vulkan-headers libxkbcommon
    qt6.full luajit
  ];
}

And put it into build directory. Then run nix-shell before running any build commands.

Getting the sources

We recommend the following directory structure:

.
├── vcmi -> contains sources and is under git control
└── build -> contains build output, makefiles, object files,...

You can get the latest source code with:

git clone -b develop --recursive https://github.com/vcmi/vcmi.git

Compilation

Configuring Makefiles

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -S ../vcmi

[!NOTE] The ../vcmi is not a typo, it will place Makefiles into the build dir as the build dir is your working dir when calling CMake.

See CMake for a list of options

Trigger build

cmake --build . -j8

(-j8 = compile with 8 threads, you can specify any value. )

This will generate vcmiclient, vcmiserver, vcmilauncher as well as .so libraries in the build/bin/ directory.

Packaging

RPM package

The first step is to prepare a RPM build environment. On Fedora systems you can follow this guide: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_an_RPM_package#SPEC_file_overview

  1. Enable RPMFusion free repo to access to ffmpeg libs:
sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

[!NOTE] The stock ffmpeg from Fedora repo is no good as it lacks a lots of codecs

  1. Perform a git clone from a tagged branch for the right Fedora version from https://github.com/rpmfusion/vcmi; for example for Fedora 38: 

    git clone -b f38 --single-branch https://github.com/rpmfusion/vcmi.git

  2. Copy all files to ~/rpmbuild/SPECS with command: 

    cp vcmi/*  ~/rpmbuild/SPECS

  3. Fetch all sources by using spectool:

sudo dnf install rpmdevtools
spectool -g -R ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/vcmi.spec
  1. Fetch all dependencies required to build the RPM:
sudo dnf install dnf-plugins-core
sudo dnf builddep ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/vcmi.spec
  1. Go to ~/rpmbuild/SPECS and open terminal in this folder and type: 
rpmbuild -ba ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/vcmi.spec
  1. Generated RPM is in folder ~/rpmbuild/RPMS

If you want to package the generated RPM above for different processor architectures and operating systems you can use the tool mock. Moreover, it is necessary to install mock-rpmfusion_free due to the packages ffmpeg-devel and ffmpeg-libs which aren't available in the standard RPM repositories(at least for Fedora). Go to ~/rpmbuild/SRPMS in terminal and type: 

mock -r fedora-38-aarch64-rpmfusion_free path_to_source_RPM
mock -r fedora-38-x86_64-rpmfusion_free path_to_source_RPM

For other distributions that uses RPM, chances are there might be a spec file for VCMI. If there isn't, you can adapt the RPMFusion's file

Available root environments and their names are listed in /etc/mock.

Debian/Ubuntu

  1. Install debhelper and devscripts packages

  2. Run dpkg-buildpackage command from vcmi source directory

sudo apt-get install debhelper devscripts
cd /path/to/source
dpkg-buildpackage

To generate packages for different architectures see "-a" flag of dpkg-buildpackage command