Topics covered:
- psyclpc & LDMud Notes
- Unix or Unix-like systems, with additional details for FreeBSD, AIX 3.4,
and DEC Ultrix.
- IPv6
- mySQL
- BeOS
- Windows 95/98/NT
- OS/2
psyclpc & LDMud Notes
---------------------
psyclpc is a variant of the LPC language optimized for psyced.
When using this driver distribution "./configure" will use the
GNU build system to generate the actual configure-do script,
then run it using psyced settings.
See also http://lpc.psyc.eu and http://about.psyc.eu/psyclpc
Should you want to make a very traditional driver close to the
LDMud original instead, copy your own settings file to the
settings directory and run it. All the new functions of psyclpc
will then automatically default to LDMud-compatible behaviour.
Unix or Unix-like system
------------------------
The driver uses a standard autoconfiguration system which on most
systems does all the work for you (for exceptions see below).
To prepare the compilation, execute the 'configure' script from
within the src/ directory. This will run the GNU autotools
to generate a configure-do script, then run it.
configure-do checks for a number of site specific settings and uses this
information to create the files machine.h (from machine.h.in), Makefile
(from Makefile.in) and config.h (from config.h.in). We'll come back to
config.h below.
configure-do takes a lot of arguments (--help will tell you everything),
but the most important are these:
--prefix=PREFIX: the base directory for the mud installation,
defaults to /usr/local/mud .
--bindir=DIR: the directory to install the executables in,
defaults to ${PREFIX}/bin .
--libdir=DIR: the directory where the mudlib is found,
defaults to ${PREFIX}/lib .
--includedir=DIR: the directory where driver's LPC include files
are supposed to live.
defaults to ${PREFIX}/include (which is usually wrong).
--libexecdir=DIR: the directory where the programs for the ERQ are found,
defaults to ${PREFIX}/libexec .
These settings are written into the Makefile and compiled into the driver,
just the mudlib directory setting can be changed with a commandline
argument.
A lot of the drivers parameters can be tweaked for better performance; these
parameters are defined in config.h . This file too is created by configure-do,
which provides sensible defaults for all parameters for which no explicite
setting is provided. To tweak a setting yourself, pass the argument
'--enable-=yes|no' resp. '--with- =' to configure-do on
the commandline.
Alternatively, the indivial specifications can be collected in a settings
file, which is stored in the directory src/settings/. To use the
setting file , give '--with-' as argument to configure-do. The
file src/settings/default documents the available settings. The setting
files are self-executing: './settings/ []' will
start configure-do with the proper commandline arguments.
The following environment variables can be used to tweak the behaviour
of the configure-do script:
CC: the name of the C compiler
CFLAGS: compiler flags to be used during the configure-do script
EXTRA_CFLAGS: compiler flags to be used when compiling the game driver
LDFLAGS: linker flags to be used by configure-do and for linking the
game driver.
After configuration is finished, you may want to modify the Makefile
to fine tune those parameters which are not covered by the configuration.
The compilation is done using make. Following targets are implemented:
: compile the driver, named 'psyclpc'.
install: compile the driver and install it in ${bindir}
utils: compile the utilities, especially the ERQ demon
install-utils: compile and install the utilities in ${bindir}
install-headers: install the driver header files in ${includedir}.
install-all: compile and install everything.
To actually run this, you need either psyced or a mudlib.
pthreads:
If your systems supports pthreads, --enable-use-pthreads will allow to
compile the driver with pthread support. Currently this means that
background threads will be used to write data to the network.
WARNING: pthreads support is still experimental and might crash
your driver!
FreeBSD:
When using gcc, it could happen that the compiler aborts with signal 10
or 11. The reasons are unknown, but you can restart the compilation
process by typing "make" again (and again...).
AIX 3.4:
The native compiler comes in several forms, of which only the
basic form 'xlc' works with the configuration script.
Start the script as:
CC=xlc ./configure-do ...
DEC Ultrix:
Depending on the system configuration you might be unable to
compile 'interpret.c' with any kind of optimization at all.
The typical symptom is a failure during the compilation with
"Error code 1". When that happens, do the following steps:
- Make as usual until the "interpret" compilation
fails. The symptom is "Error code 1".
- Edit the makefile. Uncomment the compilation
line for debugging, and comment the compilation
line containing the optimization switches and
options.
- Start the make again. After the "interpret"
compilation completes, control-C out of the
compilation.
- Edit the makefile again. Re-comment the line
for debugging, and uncomment the line with
the optimization switches and options.
- Start the make again. This time it will
complete as expected.
IPv6
----
If your machine supports IPv6, the driver can be configured to use it: give
'--enable-use-ipv6=yes' as argument to the configure-do script.
Beware: the driver support is rudimentary, experimental, and may cease to
function on the next full moon. Additional work is necessary to really
change _all_ address-related functions in driver and mudlibs.
IPv6 support was implemented by Uwe .
In order to test IPv6 under Linux you need a 2.2.x kernel (preferably 2.2.10
or better) and the inet6 apps. If you use glibc 2.0, you need version 0.35
of the inet6 apps, or for glibc 2.1 you need version 0.36. The apps should
installed into /usr/inet6.
The apps are available on ftp.inner.net or on its mirrors, e.g.
resp.
Furthermore you need a connection to the 6bone
(/include and , the library files will be search
in /lib/mysql, /lib, and , in this order.
The username and password for the mySQL database are specified by
the mudlib as arguments to the efun db_connect().
Use mysqladmin to create any databases you want to provide - the
names are later used in the efun db_connect() to connect to
the databases.
BeOS
----
Under BeOS, the driver can be configured and compiled in two ways:
1. Using the provided configuration files.
Copy the files machine.h, config.h and Makefile from src/hosts/be/
to src/. You may have to edit config.h and Makefile if you have
to use a specific mudlib with exotic settings.
Advantage of this method is that the Makefile allows cross-compilation
and covers Be specifics like file icon, type and version.
2. Use the configure-do mechanism.
In general just follow the instructions given for Unix systems, but
be aware of the follwing:
- If the configure-do script doesn't properly work, try starting it
with
CC="$BE_C_COMPILER" EXTRA_CFLAGS="$BE_DEFAULT_C_FLAGS" ./configure-do
or (especially on BeOS R4.5 on PPC) even
CC=cc EXTRA_CFLAGS="$BE_DEFAULT_C_FLAGS" ./configure-do
- the created executable will have neither icon nor type.
- cross compilation is not supported.
- the Makefile defaults to best optimization which needs a lot
of memory during compilation.
If on driver start you get an error about an unknown hostname or
seems to hang, you're missing an /etc/hosts file:
- In the network preferences, select a name for you machine,
e.g. 'bebox'. The domain name field can be blank.
- Copy the /boot/beos/etc/hosts-sample file to /boot/beos/etc/hosts,
and edit it to contain at least the following lines:
127.0.0.1 bebox.my-isp.com bebox
127.1 bebox.my-isp.com bebox
(Note: in the file, every line has to start with the IP address -
no leading spaces are allowed).
With the current networking implementation, the driver is unable
to start ERQs. In order to use ERQs, you have to start them manually.
Other than this, the installation steps are the same as for Unix.
Windows 95/98/NT
----------------
To compile the gamedriver for Windows, you need the 'Cygwin' package,
which is a port of gcc, bash, and other GNU/Unix programs. Once it
is installed and running, the procedure is the same as under Unix.
CygWin is available from .
The following comments were provided by Robert Nurrie(?) who had
an misconfigured Cygnus installation (Summer 2000):
"Make sure you've used the setup.exe you get when clicking the 'install
cygwin now' link in the upper right corner of their website, instead of
the setup.exe found on the ftp-site.
Oh, and when you're given the choice of default text file type you
should of course chose Dos, as that seems to be the key."
Brandon Mathis points out, "that to compile under Windows you have to
use 'tar -xvfj' and not WinZIP to extract the source".
OS/2
----
The OS/2 port uses the EMX (a gcc version) to compile the gamedriver.
To compile the driver, copy the machine.h and Makefile from the hosts/os2
directory into the top directory and make as under Unix. The Makefile
is configured to install the driver in /mud - edit the variable 'prefix'
if you want a different directory.
Important: the Makefile must be save using the Unix lineend convention,
otherwise the make program will stop with an error. In the EPM editor
this can be achieved using the 'save -u' command.
If you have the full GNU suite installed, you can also configure-do the
driver as under Unix. Following caveats regarding the configure-do script:
- the ac_exeext variable may not be set to '.exe' as it should be;
- the calls to the program conftest may lack the ${ac_exeext} extension.
Additionally, configure-do does not properly recognize the settings for
HAVE_GETRUSAGE, GETRUSAGE_RESTRICTED, GETRUSAGE_VIA_SYSCALL and RUSAGE_USEC.
Copy these values from the provided machine.h
To recreate the configure-do script from configure.in, you need autoconf
version 2.50 or newer.