Development:Main

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Outlined below is information on assisting with the development of the Spring source itself.

NOTE: For information about developing a mod (units, maps, etc.) see the Mod Development page.

Below you can find information on how to work with the Spring source in the current mainline (Windows platform) if you like to work on another platform (Linux & Mac) please look at the bottem of this page under "Multiplatform development"

Starting Development

To start development, you will need

  1. The latest version of the source
  2. A good code manipulation program
  3. Compiling your modified source

Keep track what others do

If you develop with others, you need to know what they do. Fisheye is a very handy svn helper, we currently use: 

http://spring.clan-sy.com/fisheye

Source Code Documentation

A good place to start is the source code documentation, which can be found here: doxygen need to be change, osrts is out

An explanation on how the code is executed in game can be found in the Spring Engine Code page.

Obtaining the Source

Update: the latest SVN is at: https://taspring.clan-sy.com/svn/spring

Another option is to manually download it along with the latest released version of the game. However, for serious developers, a better way would be to download the source straight from the subversion (SVN) repository. This will also allow you to make a patch out of the changes you make to the code, and send it to one of the developers with SVN access.

windows SVN clients : Subversion (Win32-Console), SmartSVN (Java) and TortoiseSVN (MSI).

assuming that you are using the Subversion svn client you can download the latest SVN source with

svn.exe checkout https://taspring.clan-sy.com/svn/spring/trunk

it will create a trunk subdirectory in the directory from where you ran it, which will contain the source code root directory which will be later referred to as /taspring

Learning C++

You will need to know C++ to modify or understand Spring's source code. If you are interested in learning C++, see Learning_CPP

However please note that badly designed code (code created by a C++ novice for example), even if working will likely not be included in the spring code. Spring is a large project, and therefore it is necessary to stay away from hack jobs and create general solutions to problems.

Modifying and Compiling the Source

See Development_IDEs. You have either to use the SCons build system that is multi platform, or use Microsoft Visual Studio for building spring.

A list of required libraries as well as pre-built packages of these follows:

  • DirectX SDK (Windows, Visual Studio C++ only)
  • PlatformSDK (Windows, Visual Studio C++ Only)

I got away with unchecking the parts of the PlatformSDK that were obviously not related (IIS, web stuff). Makes for a smaller download. Make sure the Platform SDK and DirectX SDK are in the VS search/include directories. After installing them, open Visual C++. Click Tools >> Options >> Projects and Solutions >> VC++ Directories.

Add these entries to the corresponding sections (paths just a reference, yours may be different):

  • Include files:
    • $(ProgramFiles)\Microsoft DirectX SDK (August 2007)\Include
    • $(ProgramFiles)\Microsoft Platform SDK\include
  • Library files:
    • $(ProgramFiles)\Microsoft DirectX SDK (August 2007)\Lib\x86
      • Might need \x64 on a 64-bit platform, I don't know.
    • $(ProgramFiles)\Microsoft Platform SDK\lib


The following are for building with SCONS/MinGW

Development System Setup

See Compiling spring (mingw and visual studio 7/8) and Installing Visual C plus plus for instructions.

  • Make sure C:\Python24 and C:\Dev-Cpp\bin are in your PATH environment variable.
  • Make sure a MINGDIR environment variable with value C:\Dev-Cpp exists. (Change paths where appropriate.)
    • Set environment variables by: Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment variables (for Windows XP).
  • Checkout the TA Spring SVN repository into your working area.
  • You will also need the MinGW/DevCPP libs extracted to your source directory obtained from SVN. ie your-working-path/source/trunk/mingwlibs. Therefore mingwlibs is at the same directory level as AI, lua and the omni directories.

Running SCONS Configure

  • Open a console (Start -> Run -> cmd.exe -> Run)
  • cd /where you checked it out in the previous step, if you checked it out on a different drive make sure to change drives with DriveLetter:<enter> first
  • type "scons configure"<enter>

Gotchas:

  • if you get an error message starting with "EOFError: : env = Environement...", try deleting the file build/scons_signatures.dblite
  • if you get an error message stating "ImportError: No module named win32file:", you have probably not installed the python-win32-extensions.

If all proceeds as intended you will see a message similar to: "Everything seems OK. Run `scons' now to build."

Compiling Spring

  • Open a console (Start -> Run -> cmd.exe -> Run)
  • cd /path-to-where you checked it out in the previous step, if you use checked it out on a different drive make sure to change drives with DriveLetter:<enter> first
  • type scons configure<enter>, followed by scons<enter>
    • Refer to scons --help for options that can be passed to scons configure
  • Wait, this will take a while
  • Copy over data files and stuff from official spring to the game dir (where spring.exe is created)
  • Copy missing DLLs from mingwlibs/dll
  • Start developing

If you are using Linux, refer to the SetupGuide to build Spring and get it running.

Development Suggestions

Before starting to make modifications to the source, take a look at the development guidelines which outlines some important things to think about. To find something interesting to work on, look at the list of example projects. You can also check the list of whois doing what to see what others are doing. If you do edit the code, please add Doxygen style comments to the code, which will then enhance the source code documentation.

How to get your code included

If you create something that you think should be included in the official source tree, you can send an email to the development mailing list shown at Linux page. Sending your code in the form of a patch (also known as a .diff file), will make the chances of including it in the main code. Many patches are submitted to Mantis. It's also considered standard practice to post one's modifications in the development forum and get feedback.

Spring Engine TODO list

There is a TODO list for developers who want to contribute to the engine itself: SpringEngineTODO

See Glossary

Development links

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