artanisace / rl_m

Maintenance releases for XRogue and Larn

RL_M

I am the official maintainer of Larn (12.5 +) and official maintainer of my XRogue fork (8.0.5 +).

Updates:<br> My BSD computer has gone up in flames (not literally) but it had a hard drive failure (eMMC). This was my only BSD machine and was used to compile Larn for BSD systems. In future builds, Larn will be built using a virualbox instance of Dragonfly BSD, I doubt it will cause problems but if any bugs do arise from not testing on 'bare metal' I won't be able to reproduce or fix. From Larn 13.2 (future release) all BSD builds will be on 'best efforts'.

Code:<br > Latest SNAPSHOT source code for Larn is in a separate branch (Larn-SNAPSHOT). There is the full complete code to build releases from, right from my local trunk. XRogue will have a branch named XRogue-SNAPSHOT (release is when it is ready).

Releases:<br > I will do a full release for every MAJOR version. A full release includes binaries for all my officially supported platforms:

1. GNU/Linux (64bit only)
2. OS X
3. Dragonfly BSD
4. Windows (32bit only)

These will come with documentation and required files. These releases will contain major functionality changes and improvements.<br >

Patch release (MINOR) versions will only get a branch update of the sourcecode with possibly binaries for systems which have had significant modifications, so users can test and report bugs. You can use the source code to build a release yourself for your platform. These patch releases will have bugfixes and code cleanups only with no major functionality updates.

Bugs:<br > Raise bugs in the issue tab. Please tell me your platform, what you were doing and what the bug is.

Building:<br > On Windows, download TDM-GCC 64bit. Install it completely into your path and then navigate to the directory where you unpacked the Larn-SNAPSHOT code and do 'mingw32-make -f mingwinrelease.mak'. PDCurses is included but is compiled only for 64bit.

On GNU/Linux install the ncurses devel package and gcc, make etc. Then do a 'make -f gnulinuxrelease.mak'.

On OSX this is a bit more complicated. Open a terminal and type gcc. This will prompt to install the cmdline tools. Then grab the latest version of ncurses6 and compile it. Do a make install and then you are ready to make Larn with 'make -f darwinrelease.mak'.

On Dragonfly BSD all required dependencies are already installed in the base system. Simply doing 'make -f bsdrelease.mak' will build the binary.

License:<br > I have found Noah Morgan's original License from 1986 in a usenet archive pertaining to Larn.

See LICENSE.txt in Larn-SNAPSHOT

Contributing:<br > Feel free to fork, fix a bug or implement a new feature and submit a pull request. However there are a few things that I respectfully ask of contributors:

1. A good grounding in the C language, code should be clean, correct, portable for all officially supported platforms and not throw warnings on all officially supported platforms (yes your code will be tested before it is merged).
2. Not to radically change gameplay and / or make the game different from it's historic roots.
3. All code submitted and accepted will be under 'Noah's License' as listed in LICENSE.txt in Larn-SNAPSHOT. By contributing to Larn, you agree to this licensing of your code. I would love to use a BSD style license, but it is not compatible with Noah's 'not for profit' clause.
4. If fixing or rewriting system-dependent functions, contributors should have a good understanding of Unix-like and Windows specific features and functions. This is required to keep Larn portable.

FAQ:<br >

Why is (OS NAME) not officially supported by you?<br > I am the only one who does all the releases, code changes and support. I must limit myself to those systems which I have installed.

Why 64bit only for *nix systems?<br > OS X and DragonflyBSD are 64bit only, 32bit support was dropped for these long ago. It won't make sense for me to support 32bit and 64bit just for GNU/Linux, so all will be 64bit only. Windows is still 32bit only to 'keep everyone happy' as it will be by far the most popular binary.

Why Dragonfly BSD and not (BSD NAME)?<br > Because out of all the BSD's, Dragonfly BSD is very modern. It has modern compilers, packages and design. If you're using a different BSD, you'll need to build from source.

No SYSVR4 compatible Support?<br > No, because the userbase would be so tiny, nobody would be using my binaries so the effort doesn't make sense. Plus these are not free to use. OpenIndiana (Illumos kernel) would be closest but they don't include a compiler and my network hardware is not supported.

When is the next release?<br > When it's ready.

Why do you use the GNU/Linux naming convention?<br > Because RMS is correct. Linux is just a kernel and without GNU userland and utils it would be pretty much useless.