************************************************************************** * * * Star Traders: A Game of Interstellar Trading * * Copyright (C) 1990-2015, John Zaitseff * * * ************************************************************************** Star Traders is written in the C99 programming language and uses Autoconf and Automake to handle compilation and installation. Assuming you have the needed tools, all you should need to do is run the following commands from the source directory: ./configure make make install The first two commands may be run as an ordinary user; the last may need to be done as the system administrator (root). Prerequisites ============= Star Traders requires the following components for successful compilation and installation: 1. A working C compiler conforming to ISO/IEC 9899:1999 (also known as C99). Any recent version of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is more than adequate. 2. An operating system ideally conforming to ISO/IEC 9945-1:2001 (POSIX) or to the X/Open Single Unix Specification v3 or later. In short, any modern Unix or Unix-like system like Linux almost certainly qualifies. In actual fact, Star Traders uses the GNU Portability Library, so many older systems may also work without modification. 3. A working X/Open Curses-compatible library, such as Ncurses. Ncurses is preferred over system-native libraries, if present. Locales with multibyte character sequences (such as UTF-8) require a wide-character version of Curses, such as NcursesW, to work correctly. 4. The GNU Gettext library, version 0.19.1 or later, to allow the game to use languages other than English; this is also called Native Language Support. If you do not have this library (and do not wish to install it), you may pass "--disable-nls" to the configure script. 5. Development libraries and header files for all of the above. On many systems, these files are part of XXX-dev or XXX-devel packages. 6. The GNU Perfect Hash Function Generator, gperf. This utility program may be required for parts of the GNU Portability Library. Installation ============ The installation of Star Traders can be broken down into three main steps: configuration, compilation and the installation proper. The first step is configuring the package for your compiler and operating system environment. As Star Traders uses Autoconf and Automake, all you need to do in most cases is run "./configure" from the top-level directory of the Star Traders source tree. The configure script understands all of the usual Autoconf options; these are explained in detail in the Autoconf manual: http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf.html#Running-configure-Scripts This version of the configure script understands the following additional command line options: --disable-nls Do not use Native Language Support --disable-assert Turn off all debugging assert() statements --with-ncurses Force the use of Ncurses over the system's Curses library --with-ncursesw Force the use of the NcursesW library with wide- character support --without-ncursesw Don't use the NcursesW library with wide-character support --without-ncurses Don't use the Ncurses library: use the system's normal Curses library By default, configure uses "/usr/local" as the top-level (prefix) install directory. You can change this by specifying "--prefix=DIR" to use DIR instead. For example, you can use a directory in your own home directory by specifying something like: ./configure --prefix=$HOME/opt/trader You may also specify certain configuration and/or compilation variables on the command line to override choices made by configure. For example, you can specify the compiler flags to use by passing the CFLAGS variable: ./configure CFLAGS="-g -O2 -Wall" The "configure" script has many other options. You may obtain a list of these by running: ./configure --help You can also run configure in a separate build-only directory tree. This feature requires GNU Make and allows you to keep the source code tree from being modified by the compilation process. To use this option, create a separate build directory, then run configure. For example, if you placed the Star Traders source code tree in $HOME/src/trader-7.8, you could run something like: mkdir $HOME/build/trader-build-7.8 cd $HOME/build/trader-build-7.8 $HOME/src/trader-7.8/configure Once again, the Autoconf manual describes these options (and many others): http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf.html#Running-configure-Scripts Once the package has been configured, you can type "make" to compile it, then "make install" to install it. You can specify the following command lines, amongst others: make all make install make clean make distclean make uninstall The command "make all" does the same thing as running "make" by itself: compile the package source code into an executable. Running "make install" copies the executable program and all associated data and documentation files to those directories specified during configuration. If any of these directories require system administrator access privileges for writing, you will need to run "make install" as system administrator (root). If you like, you can specify the DESTDIR variable to copy all installation files to a temporary location before installing them later. For example, if the prefix directory is "/usr/local", typing: make install DESTDIR=/tmp/trader-install will copy the final program "trader" to /tmp/trader-install/usr/local/bin, the manual page to /tmp/trader-install/usr/local/share/man/man6 and so on. The "make clean" command will remove most build-generated files, such as object files generated by the compiler, from the source code or build directory. Running "make distclean" will do the same, but will remove the Makefiles generated by configure as well. In other words, if you run "make distclean", you will need to rerun "configure" if you would like to recompile Star Traders at a later date. Finally, "make uninstall" will remove the executable program "trader" and associated data and documentation files from their final installation location. This assumes, of course, that you have NOT run "make distclean" to remove the Makefiles that know the path to which those files were installed! Subversion Repository ===================== You can always download the latest version of Star Traders directly from the Subversion repository on the ZAP Group server: svn co http://svn.zap.org.au/svn/trader/unix/trunk/ trader Released versions of Star Traders include all scripts and files needed for installation. If you are checking out the source code from the Subversion repository, however, you will need to update these files yourself. You will need the following additional tools installed on your system to do so: 1. Autoconf (http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/) 2. Automake (http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/) 3. GNU Portability Library (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/) The GNU Portability Library may be installed by retrieving the latest Gnulib source code from the Git repository: git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/gnulib.git Once you have these tools, change to the Star Traders source code tree and type: PATH=${PATH}:/path/to/gnulib-tool ./build-aux/bootstrap where "/path/to/gnulib-tool" is, of course, the directory containing the Gnulib "gnulib-tool" script. You should be ready to run "./configure && make && make install" now. For Translators =============== Thank you for even considering to translate Star Traders into your native language! You may use either a released version of Star Traders, or an unreleased one, as discussed in the Subversion Repository section above. In either case, you may find the following workflow useful. First, run "./build-aux/bootstrap" if needed (only for unreleased versions of Star Traders). Next, configure and install Star Traders into your home directory: ./configure --prefix=$HOME/opt/trader make make install If you are adding a new translation, add its GNU Gettext language code to the file po/LINGUAS, then create the template file for that language ("zz" is used here): (cd po; msginit --locale=zz --width=132) Now, modify the PO file for your language using your favourite editor or translation tool. Please note that the generated PO file has extensive documentation in its translator comments. If anything is unclear, please feel free to ask the author and maintainer; contact details are available in the README file. To test your PO file, compile and run Star Traders (replace "zz" with your language code, of course): make && make -C po zz.gmo && make install LANGUAGE=zz $HOME/opt/trader/bin/trader The "make -C po zz.gmo" forces the rebuilding of the GMO output file; the "LANGUAGE=zz" parameter sets the language of the messages to use. This process of editing and testing the PO file can be done iteratively, of course: make a change, recompile, run the program to see the changes, repeat as needed. Once you have finished your translation, please submit the PO file to the Translation Project. The relevant web page for Star Traders is: http://translationproject.org/domain/trader.html More information for translators is available at: http://translationproject.org/html/translators.html To clean up your install directory, simply run: rm -fr $HOME/opt/trader By the way, as mentioned in the translator comments, formatting the help text is probably the most complicated and tedious part of translating Star Traders. The author and maintainer of this game is more than happy to help you with this task: if you are able to provide a translation, even if it is not formatted correctly, the maintainer will perform the necessary adjustments for word-wrapping and justification.