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.

Prerequisites:

Note: Windows XP is unsupported!

MINGW64

  • Windows 7, 8, 8.1
  • 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

UCRT64

  • Windows 10 and later

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.

When working from Microsoft Terminal default MSYS2 profile, run:

MSYSTEM=MINGW64 bash -l

or

MSYSTEM=UCRT64 bash -l

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:

-> Windows 7, 8, 8.1

pacman -S git make ncurses-devel gettext-devel mingw-w64-x86_64-{astyle,ccache,cmake,gcc,libmad,libwebp,pkgconf,SDL2,libzip,libavif} mingw-w64-x86_64-SDL2_{image,mixer,ttf}

-> Windows 10 and later

pacman -S git make ncurses-devel gettext-devel mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-{astyle,ccache,cmake,gcc,libmad,libwebp,pkgconf,SDL2,libzip,libavif} mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-SDL2_{image,mixer,ttf}
  1. Close MSYS2.

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).

Note: If you want to contribute to CDDA, see example git workflow.

  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.

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.

Note: See COMPILING-CMAKE.md section CMake Build for MSYS2 (MinGW) for using the CMake build system.

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).