BUILDING.md

Building Larn for Multiple Architectures

I am the official maintainer of Larn.

This document describes how to build Larn 26.4.0 across a wide range of CPU architectures and operating systems.
The modern codebase is fully endian‑neutral, alignment‑safe, and curses‑portable, making it suitable for both native and cross‑compiled builds.

1. Overview

Larn can be built in three ways:

1. Native build on the target system
2. Cross‑compilation using GCC or Clang
3. Emulated build inside QEMU or SIMH

All three methods produce identical binaries.

The build system is intentionally simple:

• Standard POSIX make
• No autoconf, cmake, or external dependencies
• Requires only a C compiler and curses library

2. Prerequisites

Required:

• C compiler (GCC, Clang, or vendor compiler)
• POSIX make
• curses or ncurses development headers
• Standard C library

Optional:

• Cross‑compiler toolchains
• QEMU for architecture testing
• SIMH for VAX builds

3. Basic Native UNIX Build

On any UNIX‑like system:

make clean
make

4. Basic Native Windows Build

On any MinGW system (NOT cygwin or MSYS2):

make -f Makefile.mingw clean
make -f Makefile.mingw prep
make -f Makefile.mingw

5. Preparing to Run the Binary:

Larn requires the contents of the 'LARNFILES' directory to be within the same directory as the binary. After that, run the Larn binary to play.

Enjoy!

~Gibbon