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Building DFHACK

Contents

Building on Linux

On Linux, DFHack acts as a library that shadows parts of the SDL API using LD_PRELOAD.

Dependencies

DFHack is meant to be installed into an existing DF folder, so get one ready.

For building, you need a 32-bit version of GCC. For example, to build DFHack on a 64-bit distribution like Arch, you'll need the multilib development tools and libraries.

Before you can build anything, you'll also need cmake. It is advisable to also get ccmake on distributions that split the cmake package into multiple parts.

For the code generation parts, you need perl and the XML::LibXML and XML::LibXSLT perl packages. You should be able to find them in your distro repositories (on Arch linux 'perl-xml-libxml' and 'perl-xml-libxslt').

Build

Building is fairly straightforward. Enter the build folder and start the build like this:

cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:string=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/user/DF
make install

Obviously, replace the install path with path to your DF. This will build the library along with the normal set of plugins and install them into your DF folder.

Alternatively, you can use ccmake instead of cmake:

cd build
ccmake ..
make install

This will show a curses-based interface that lets you set all of the extra options.

You can also use a cmake-friendly IDE like KDevelop 4 or the cmake-gui program.

Building on Windows

First, you need cmake. Get the win32 installer version from the official site: http://www.cmake.org/cmake/resources/software.html

It has the usual installer wizard. Make sure you let it add its binary folder to your binary search PATH so the tool can be later run from anywhere.

You'll need a copy of Microsoft Visual C++ 2010. The Express version is sufficient. Grab it from Microsoft's site.

For the code generation parts, you'll need perl and XML::LibXML. You can install them like this:

  • download and install strawberry perl from http://strawberryperl.com/
  • reboot so that the system can pick up the new binary path
  • open a cmd.exe window and run "cpan XML::LibXML" (obviously without the quotes). This can take a while to complete.
  • Same with "cpan XML::LibXSLT".

Build

Open the build folder and double click the batch script there. This will eventually open a cmake GUI window. Here, set CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to your DF folder and set up any other options you're interested in. Hit configure and generate, close the GUI.

This crates a folder under build/ that contains the solution files for MSVC.

When you open the solution, make sure you never use the Debug builds. Those aren't binary-compatible with DF. If you try to use a debug build with DF, you'll only get crashes. So pick either Release or RelWithDebInfo build and build the INSTALL target.

Build types

cmake allows you to pick a build type by changing this variable: CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE

cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:string=BUILD_TYPE

Without specifying a build type or 'None', cmake uses the CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS variable for building.

Valid and useful build types include 'Release', 'Debug' and 'RelWithDebInfo'. 'Debug' is not available on Windows.

Using the library as a developer

Currently, the only way to use the library is to write a plugin that can be loaded by it. All the plugins can be found in the 'plugins' folder. There's no in-depth documentation on how to write one yet, but it should be easy enough to copy one and just follow the pattern.

The most important parts of DFHack are the Core, Console, Modules and Plugins.

  • Core acts as the centerpiece of DFHack - it acts as a filter between DF and SDL and synchronizes the various plugins with DF.
  • Console is a thread-safe console that can be used to invoke commands exported by Plugins.
  • Modules actually describe the way to access information in DF's memory. You can get them from the Core. Most modules are split into two parts: high-level and low-level. Higl-level is mostly method calls, low-level publicly visible pointers to DF's data structures.
  • Plugins are the tools that use all the other stuff to make things happen. A plugin can have a list of commands that it exports and an onupdate function that will be called each DF game tick.

Rudimentary API documentation can be built using doxygen (see build options with ccmake or cmake-gui).

DFHack consists of variously licensed code, but invariably weak copyleft. The main license is zlib/libpng, some bits are MIT licensed, and some are BSD licensed.

Feel free to add your own extensions and plugins. Contributing back to the dfhack repository is welcome and the right thing to do :)

Contributing to DFHack

Several things should be kept in mind when contributing to DFHack.

Coding style

DFhack uses ANSI formatting and four spaces as indentation. Line endings are UNIX. The files use UTF-8 encoding. Code not following this won't make me happy, because I'll have to fix it. There's a good chance I'll make you fix it ;)

How to get new code into DFHack

You can send patches or make a clone of the github repo and ask me on the IRC channel to pull your code in. I'll review it and see if there are any problems. I'll fix them if they are minor.

Fixes are higher in priority. If you want to work on something, but don't know what, check out http://github.com/peterix/dfhack/issues -- this is also a good place to dump new ideas and/or bugs that need fixing.

Memory research

If you want to do memory research, you'll need some tools and some knowledge. In general, you'll need a good memory viewer and optionally something to look at machine code without getting crazy :)

Good windows tools include:

  • Cheat Engine
  • IDA Pro (the free version)

Good linux tools:

  • edb (Evan's Debugger)
  • IDA Pro running under wine.
  • Some of the tools residing in the legacy dfhack branch.

Using publicly known information and analyzing the game's data is preferred.