This article contains compilation instructions for all supported platforms.

You should first read the getting_started page.

Regardless of which platform is being used, you'll need to install the Qt libraries and qmake in order to build Doomsday.

Windows

The compiler we use on Windows is Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 Express Edition. (GCC is not supported on Windows.)

• Qt 5 (latest version). VS 2013 OpenGL build recommended.
• SDL 2.0 and SDL_mixer 2.0. Download these from http://www.libsdl.org.
• direct_x 9.0 or later. The SDK can be downloaded from Microsoft's DirectX site.
• OpenGL 2 (or later) headers.
• eax 2.0. Used for environmental sound effects such as reverb. EAX 3.0 may work as well but hasn't been tested. The SDK used to be available on Creative's Developer Central site.

Mac OS X

• Qt 5 (latest version).
• The .frameworks for SDL2 (for joysticks) and SDL2_mixer (if using SDL2_mixer audio). These can be downloaded from http://www.libsdl.org/.

Unix

xxf86vm, xrandr, curses, sdl2, libqt4-dev (although Qt 5 recommended)

See also: build_tools_for_unix

audio_fluidsynth plugin

• libfluidsynth-dev (unless using the embedded synthesizer under external)
• OS X: pkg-config and glib (e.g., from Homebrew)

audio_fmod plugin

• FMOD Ex Programmers API

audio_openal plugin

• open_al 1.1 SDK, if you want to build the audio_openal audio driver. The SDK can be downloaded from Creative's Developer Central site.

1. Open doomsday.pro in Qt Creator. This is the main project file that builds everything. You can also open one of the .pro files in the subdirectories to build a specific component. Note, however, that most require the Doomsday 2 libraries (libcore, libgui, libappfw, libshell) and liblegacy .
2. Check your config_user.pri. It is for build options specific to your system and/or personal preferences, e.g., locations of the third-party SDKs. Another important purpose of the file is to set the CONFIG variable to enable/disable Doomsday build options (e.g., deng_fmod). See below for platform-specific notes.
3. Go to Projects → Desktop :: Build :: Build Steps. Here you can configure how qmake is run by the IDE, if you wish to specify additional options (e.g., PREFIX=/some/path on Unix).
4. Build → Run qmake. Check the output for any error messages.
5. (This step does not apply to Mac OS X.) Switch to the Run tab. Click on Deployment → Add Deploy Step to add a new Make step. Put “install” in the arguments for Make. This will cause all the built components to be deployed to their platform-specific install location (see notes below).
6. Build → Build Project “doomsday”.

• You need to manually specify all 3rd party SDK paths (e.g., FMOD, SDL). Examples have been provided in config_user-example.pri.
• Built binaries and other files are deployed under distrib\products. The directory structure mirrors the one that is created by the distribution installer.

• You will most likely want to compile using the default Mac OS SDK that matches the version of your operating system. You can do this by adding CONFIG+=deng_nativesdk to your config_user.pri. When you run qmake, it will print a message about the selected SDK. (See config_macx.pri for details. For the needs of the autobuilder, the SDK selection by default occurs based on which version of Qt is available.)
• The “postbuild” subproject will automatically run a script that collects all the binaries into a single Doomsday.app bundle. Consequently, it is not necessary to run “make install”.

• Set the PREFIX in config_user.pri or on the qmake command line so the installed files are placed in a suitable location (e.g., “~/deng”). It is not possible to run the game without “make install”.

1. Go to Projects → Desktop :: Run and create a custom Run configuration.
2. Set distrib\products\bin\doomsday.exe as the executable.
3. Set the arguments, e.g. -game doom1-ultimate -iwad \some\path\Doom.wad
4. Set distrib\products as the working directory.

1. Set %{buildDir}/client/Doomsday.app as the executable.
2. Add options as follows in the Run configuration (modify to suit your needs): -vdmap .. }data -bd Doomsday.app/Contents/Resources -iwad /mypath/Doom.wad -game doom1-ultimate
3. Set %{buildDir}/client as the working directory.

1. Modify the Run configuration to start the binary from your installed location. Note that the path you specified as the PREFIX was built in to the engine, so it knows to look for the resources by default from that location. You'll still need to specify the game plugin and IWAD file, though.

qmake is a portable compiling system. It works pretty much the same way on all platforms. Brief summary of how to use it: you will need to create an empty directory where the generated binaries and other build files will be stored, and then run qmake from within that directory. For example:

qmake -r ../doomsday/doomsday.pro CONFIG+=deng_notools
make
make install

You can use the automated build system to create and package a build of the Doomsday Engine. The way to do this is to go to the distrib directory inside the Doomsday source tree and type this command:

python platform_release.py

It will automatically detect the operating system and create a suitable type of build. The result will appear in the distrib/releases directory.