deva.cloud

If you have any additions, corrections, ideas, or bug reports please stop by the Builder Academy at telnet://tbamud.com:9091 or email rumble@tbamud.com – Rumble

Porting tbaMUD to New Platforms Originally by Jeremy Elson

tbaMUD is a very portable program by design, but is not guaranteed to run on every platform that exists. This document is for experienced programmers trying to make tbaMUD work on their platform.

tbaMUD should work on most UNIX platforms without any modifications; simply run the configure script and it should automatically detect what type of system you have and anything that may be strange about it. These findings are all stored in a header file called conf.h which is created in the src directory from a template called conf.h.in. A Makefile is also created from the template Makefile.in.

Non-UNIX platforms are a problem. Some cant run tbaMUD at all. However, any multitasking OS that has an ANSI C compiler, and supports non-blocking I/O and socket-based TCP/IP networking, should theoretically be able to run tbaMUD; for example, OS/2, AmigaOS, Mac OS (Classic versions; Mac OS X supports tbaMUDs configure script from the command line), and all versions of Windows.

The port can be very easy or very difficult, depending mainly on whether or nor your OS supports the Berkeley socket API.

The general steps for porting tbaMUD to a non-UNIX platform are listed below. A number of tips for porting can be found after the porting steps. Note that we have already ported tba to Windows, so if youre confused as to how to perform some of these steps, you can look at what we have done as an example (see the files README.CYGWIN).

Note that you should not try to do this unless you are an experienced C programmer and have a solid, working knowledge of the system to which you are trying to port the code.

Porting the Code

Step 1. Create a conf.h file for your system. Copy the template conf.h.in to conf.h, and then define or undefine each item as directed by the comments and based on the characteristics of your system. To write the conf.h file, youll need to know which header files are included with your system, the return type of signals, whether or not your compiler supports the const keyword, and whether or not you have various functions such as crypt()and random(). Also, you can ignore the HAVE_LIBxxx and HAVE_xxx_PROTO constants at the end of conf.h.in; they are not used in the code (they are part of UNIX autoconf).

Step 2. Create a Makefile. Again, copy the template Makefile.in and make any changes which may be appropriate for your system. Make sure to remove the @xxx@ variables such as @LIBS@, @CC@, @NETLIB@, etc., and replace them with the appropriate values if necessary.

Step 3. Make the appropriate patches to the code so that the TCP/IP reads and writes and signal handling are compatible with your system. This is the hardest part of porting tbaMUD. All of the changes you will need to make will probably be in the source file comm.c.

Step 4. Test your changes! Make sure that multiple people can log in simultaneously and that they can all type commands at the same time. No player should ever have a frozen screen just because another is waiting at a prompt. Leave the MUD up for at least 24 hours, preferably with people playing it, to make sure that your changes are stable. Make sure that automatic events such as zone resets, point regeneration, and corpse decomposition are being timed correctly (a tick should be about 75 seconds). Try resetting all the zones repeatedly by typing zr * many times. Play the MUD and make sure that the basic commands (killing mobs as a mortal, casting spells, etc.) work correctly.

Step 5. If you are satisfied that your changes work correctly, you are encouraged to submit them to be included as part of the tbaMUD distribution so that future releases of tbaMUD will support your platform. This prevents you from re-porting the code every time a new version is released and allows other people who use your platform to enjoy tbaMUD as well. To submit your changes you must make a patch file using the GNU diff program. diff will create a patch file which can be later used with the patch utility to incorporate your changes into the stock tbaMUD distribution. For example, if you have a copy of tbaMUD in the stock-tba directory, and your changes are in my-tba, you can create a patch file like this:

diff -u –new-file –recursive stock-tba/src my-tba/src > patch

This will create a file called patch with your patches. You should then try to use the patch program (the inverse of diff) on a copy of tbaMUD to make sure that tbaMUD is correctly changed to incorporate your patches. This step is very important: if you dont create these patches correctly, your work will be useless because no one will be able to figure out what you did! Make sure to read the documentation to diff and patch if you dont understand how to use them. If your patches work, CELEBRATE!!

Step 6. Write a README file for your operating system that describes everything that has to be done by another user of your operating system to get tbaMUD to compile from scratch. You should include a section on required hardware, software, compilers, libraries, etc. Also include detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to compile and run everything. You can look at the other README files in the distribution (README.CYGWIN, README.OS2, etc.) for examples of what your README file should include.

Step 7. You are done! Congratulations! Mail your conf.h, Makefile, patches, and README file to Rumble at rumble@tbamud.com so that they can be included in future releases of tbaMUD. Please share your work so that other users can benefit too.

3 Porting Tips

3.1 Making your own CIRCLE_system constant Each system to which tba is already ported has a CIRCLE_xx constant associated with it: CIRCLE_UNIX for plain vanilla UNIX tbaMUD, CIRCLE_WINDOWS for MS Windows, CIRCLE_OS2 for IBM OS/2, and CIRCLE_AMIGA for the Amiga. You must use a similar constant for your system. At the top of your conf.h, make sure to comment out #define CIRCLE_UNIX and add #define CIRCLE_YOUR_SYSTEM.

3.2 ANSI C and GCC As long as your system has an ANSI C compiler, all of the code (except for comm.c) should compile with no major complaints. However, tbaMUD was written using gcc, and some compilers are nitpicky about things that gcc does not care about (and the other way around). Therefore, you are highly encouraged to use gcc if at all possible. gcc has been ported to a very large number of platforms, possibly including yours, and your port will be made much easier if you use gcc.

3.3 Non-Blocking I/O Make absolutely sure to use non-blocking I/O; i.e. make sure to enable the option so that the read() system call will immediately return with an error if there is no data available. If you do not use non-blocking I/O, read() will block, meaning it will wait infinitely for one particular player to type something even if other players are trying to enter commands. If your system does not implement non-blocking I/O correctly, try using the POSIX_NONBLOCK_BROKEN constant in sysdep.h.

3.4 Timing tbaMUD needs a fairly precise (on the order of 5 or 10 ms) timer in order to correctly schedule events such as zone resets, point regeneration (ticks), corpse decomposition, and other automatic tasks. If your system supports the select() system call with sufficient precision, the default timing code should work correctly. If not, youll have to find out which system calls your system supports for determining how much time has passed and replace the select() timing method.

3.5 Signals and Signal Handlers A note about signals: Most systems dont support the concept of signals in the same way that UNIX does. Since signals are not a critical part of how tbaMUD works anyway (they are only used for updating the wizlist and some other trivial things), all signal handling is turned off by default when compiling under any non-UNIX platform (i.e. the Windows and Amiga ports do not use signals at all.) Simply make sure that CIRCLE_UNIX is not defined in your conf.h file and all signal code will be ignored automatically.

4 Final Note IMPORTANT: Remember to keep any changes you make surrounded by #ifdef statements (i.e. #ifdef CIRCLE_WINDOWS … #endif). If you make absolutely sure to mark all of your changes with #ifdef statements, then your patches (once you get them to work) will be suitable for incorporation into the tbaMUD distribution, meaning that tbaMUD will officially support your platform.