Obtaining and installing dopewars

The dopewars source code and precompiled binaries for Intel and Alpha systems (in RPM format) are available from the main dopewars web page, at http://dopewars.sourceforge.net/. Just follow the link from there to the download section. "rpm" is the RedHat Package Manager, a program for simplifying installation and upgrade of programs, and is part of the RedHat Linux distribution. If you are using a different distribution, it may be still be included, however. If you do not want to use "rpm", or the installation fails, then you can obtain the source code tarball and recompile the code from scratch.

Prerequisites: dopewars relies on the GLib library for all builds; this library is used for parsing the configuration files, network and string handling, and many other purposes. On a Windows system, this is the only prequisite; the standard Windows libraries are used for everything else. On a Unix/Linux system, you will also need the screen library curses (or the equivalent, such as ncurses or cur_colr) for the text-mode client, and the GTK+ libraries for the graphical client.

RPM binary installation

The binary RPMs are built for Compaq (formerly DEC) Alpha systems running RedHat Linux 7.0, and Intel (also Intel compatibles, such as AMD, Cyrix, etc.) systems running RedHat Linux 7.1. On other systems, these binary RPMs may refuse to install, or may run but then crash with mysterious segmentation faults due to library conflicts.

  1. Download the Alpha or i386 (Intel) RPM with your web browser. (If your browser is incorrectly set up, it may try and display the file, in which case tell it explicitly to save the file - Shift+Mouse button 1 in Netscape.)
  2. Become root on your Unix box (if you cannot become root, then you will probably not be able to use RPM installation, depending on how "rpm" is set up).
  3. Change to the directory containing the dopewars rpm, and install it with the command
    rpm -Uvh dopewars-1.5.1-1.xxx.rpm
    (where xxx is i386 or alpha). This will replace any already-installed earlier version.

RPM source installation

This route is open to you if your system has "rpm", but the binary RPMs do not work on your system, or your machine is not an Intel or Alpha (a PowerMac, for example). It involves obtaining the RPM of the source code, and then building the binaries from it on your system.

  1. Download the source code RPM.
  2. Become root and change to the directory containing the new rpm.
  3. Build a binary rpm with the command
    rpm --rebuild dopewars-1.5.1-1.src.rpm
  4. Change to the directory which the binary rpm has been written to (check the output of the above - usually /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/xxx, where xxx is your machine type - for example, "i386" on Intel machines, "alpha" on Alphas)
  5. Install the binary rpm with the command
    rpm -Uvh dopewars-1.5.1-1.xxx.rpm

Tarball installation

If you don't have, or don't want to use, RPM, you can obtain the source code in gzipped, tarred ("tarball") format and recompile and install it yourself. This is also usually a necessity if you cannot become root (the superuser) on your Unix box, or if you wish to build the Windows version from source code.

Before beginning, you should ensure that you have all the necessary prequisites (see above). To compile on a Windows system, you should install the free Cygwin suite, and use the included compiler. (You could use a different C/C++ Windows compiler, but you'll have to write your project files if you do this.) On either Windows or Unix systems, you will need to get the GLib library first, available for Unix here or for Windows here.

  1. Download the source code tarball.
  2. Change to the directory containing the tarball and extract the contents with the command
    tar -xvzf dopewars-1.5.1.tar.gz
    (or similar).
  3. Change into the dopewars-1.5.1 directory, and read all the important documentation in there ;)
  4. Build the binary with the commands
    ./configure
    make
  5. Become root and install the dopewars files with
    make install
    The configure script will test your system and set up dopewars so that it should compile cleanly. If you are running the Cygwin tools under Microsoft Windows, the script should detect this and allow you to build a native Windows binary; this will then run on any Win32 system, even one without Cygwin installed. The configure script supports a number of configurable options; for more details, read the INSTALL file in the dopewars-1.5.1 directory.

    If you cannot become root, run the configure script specifying directories for which you have write access for both the dopewars binary and high score file with a command such as
    ./configure --bindir=/home/user/dopewars --datadir=/home/user/dopewars

Last update: 18-06-2001