SetupGuide

If you're running Gentoo linux, you're lucky, because an ebuild is already available. If not, a short walk-trough to compile, run and debug spring on provided below.

In short, to get spring compiled under linux, make sure you've got all necessary development packages installed. On (K)Ubuntu linux, and maybe Debian too, this can be done by copying the following in a terminal (or use the graphical package manager Synaptic or Adept if you can't stand commandline):

apt-get install build-essential subversion scons libsdl-dev libopenal-dev libglew-dev libboost-dev libboost-thread-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-regex-dev libdevil-dev libfreetype6-dev

For any other distribution, grab these libraries and the base development packages too (for Gentoo, base development packages aren't needed, because everything is compiled from source: they're already installed). I've no clue about RPM based distros. But google is your friend.

To grab the sourcecode from SVN (using commandline SVN), refer to this berlios page about SVN. Use one of the two anonymous checkout methods (upper two) unless you're a spring developer (but in that case you wouldn't be reading this, right?).

To compile the sourcecode, switch to the trunk directory created by the svn checkout in the previous step. Then type: scons configure to configure the build. (You can fine tune the build by passing options to this command [for enabling debugging/optimizing etc.]. Type scons --help to view the available options.) Now, if you really installed all development package, the scons configure will output: "Everything seems OK. Run `scons' now to build.". If it outputs with an error you're probably missing a development package.

As instructed on end of previous step, type: scons Spring will now build including NTAI, JCAI and a few GroupAIs. You should end up with a file trunk/game/spring (the executable) and some shared objects (SOs or DLLs) in trunk/game/aidll.

Now, grab the linux data tarball from berlios and extract it somewhere (or use your windows datafiles for this step if you can acces them from linux). mkdir (make directories) game/base, game/maps and game/mods and put respectively the base files, the mod file(s) and your map file(s) in it.

Now run spring by cd'ing (change dir) to the trunk/game directory and typing: ./spring If you've compiled with debugging enabled, you might want to run inside gdb to provide the devs with a backtrace if spring crashes: gdb ./spring
Basic commands inside gdb are:
- run - Run the program (spring)
- bt - Print a backtrace
- quit - Quit
- help - This one's important

Be happy!

Even a tip: If spring hangs/crashes while in full screen mode, you can press ctrl+alt+backspace to restart X, so no need for a reboot.

If you really can't figure out how to get spring compiled, or you think there's a bug in the code or the buildsystem, just poke any developer on IRC (channel #taspring on FreeNode or channel #sy on QuakeNet), post it on the forum, or file a bug in our BTS.