Compilation guide for 64-bit Windows (using MSYS2)

This guide contains instructions for compiling Cataclysm-DDA on Windows under MSYS2. PLEASE NOTE: These instructions are not intended to produce a redistributable copy of CDDA. Please download the official builds from the website or cross-compile from Linux if that is your intention.

These instructions were written using 64-bit Windows 7 and the 64-bit version of MSYS2; the steps should be the same for other versions of Windows.

Prerequisites:

  • Windows 7, 8, 8.1, or 10
  • NTFS partition with ~10 Gb free space (~2 Gb for MSYS2 installation, ~3 Gb for repository and ~5 Gb for ccache)
  • 64-bit version of MSYS2

Note: Windows XP is unsupported!

Installation:

  1. Go to the MSYS2 homepage and download the installer.

  2. Run the installer. It is suggested that you install to a dev-specific folder (C:\dev\msys64\ or similar), but it’s not strictly necessary.

  3. After installation, run MSYS2 64bit now.

Configuration:

  1. Update the package database and core system packages:
pacman -Syyu

  1. MSYS will inform you of a cygheap base mismatch and inform you a forked process died unexpectedly; these errors appear to be due to the nature of pacman’s upgrades and may be safely ignored. You will be prompted to close the terminal window; do so, then re-start using the MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit menu item.

  2. Update remaining packages:

pacman -Su
  1. Install packages required for compilation:
pacman -S git make mingw-w64-x86_64-{astyle,ccache,gcc,libmad,libwebp,pkg-config,SDL2} mingw-w64-x86_64-SDL2_{image,mixer,ttf}

  1. Close MSYS2.

  2. Update path variables in the system-wide profile file (e.g. C:\dev\msys64\etc\profile) as following:

  • find lines:
    MSYS2_PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin"
    MANPATH='/usr/local/man:/usr/share/man:/usr/man:/share/man'
    INFOPATH='/usr/local/info:/usr/share/info:/usr/info:/share/info'

and

    PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/share/pkgconfig:/lib/pkgconfig"
  • and replace them with:
    MSYS2_PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/mingw64/bin"
    MANPATH='/usr/local/man:/usr/share/man:/usr/man:/share/man:/mingw64/share/man'
    INFOPATH='/usr/local/info:/usr/share/info:/usr/info:/share/info:/mingw64/share/man'

and

    PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/share/pkgconfig:/lib/pkgconfig:/mingw64/lib/pkgconfig:/mingw64/share/pkgconfig"

Cloning and compilation:

  1. Open MSYS2 and clone the Cataclysm-DDA repository:
cd /c/dev/
git clone https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA.git ./Cataclysm-DDA

Note: This will download the entire CDDA repository and all of its history (3GB). If you’re just testing, you should probably add --depth=1 (~350MB).

  1. Compile with following command line:
cd Cataclysm-DDA
make -j$((`nproc`+0)) CCACHE=1 RELEASE=1 MSYS2=1 DYNAMIC_LINKING=1 SDL=1 TILES=1 SOUND=1 LOCALIZE=1 LANGUAGES=all LINTJSON=0 ASTYLE=0 TESTS=0

You will receive warnings about unterminated character constants; they do not impact the compilation as far as this writer is aware.

Note: This will compile a release version with Sound and Tiles support and all localization languages, skipping checks and tests, and using ccache for build acceleration. You can use other switches, but MSYS2=1, DYNAMIC_LINKING=1 and probably RELEASE=1 are required to compile without issues.

Running:

  1. Run inside MSYS2 from Cataclysm’s directory with the following command:
./cataclysm-tiles

Note: If you want to run the compiled executable outside of MSYS2, you will also need to update your user or system PATH variable with the path to MSYS2’s runtime binaries (e.g. C:\dev\msys64\mingw64\bin).