Compile TRX using Zig CC

[Toumlab]

Hi!

I would be really grateful if someone (I'm thinking of Absolutelynothinghere for example :) ) could share with us the exact procedure and dependencies that can be used to compile TRX using Zig CC on Linux.
Thanks

[absolutelynothinghere]

I started writing the detailed steps, but this may take me some time. I'll try finishing this week and when I do I'll reply here. :)

[absolutelynothinghere]

So here's how to build TRX (tr1) using Zig CC on Linux for GLIBC 2.7+, such that the compiled game works on as many distros as possible.

The procedure outlined here uses a chroot jail as the build environment since chroot(1) is already available on all Linux systems, but you can probably use Docker or other container technologies if preferred. You'll find two scripts below which have been reduced from their original form to focus only on building TRX, resulting in an environment that is extremely minimal.

---

Step 1 - Creating the chroot: mkjail.sh

This script creates a chroot jail from scratch. You may edit the first few lines of the script to suit your needs. Some files will be downloaded automatically, if you would like to download them yourself you can get a list of URLs by running this command:

cat mkjail.sh | grep "http" | sed -e 's/.*"\(.*\)"$/\1/'

Note that this script calls the chroot command which requires superuser.

Script outline:

1. Create an empty directory containing usr/bin/, opt/, and tmp/. Symlink usr/bin/ to bin/. If you have already downloaded the needed files you should place them in the newly created tmp/ directory.
2. Download some pre-compiled programs: Toybox (basic shell + utilities), curl (file downloader), Zig (compiler for Zig/C/C++), and zld (linker). These programs form the basis of the chroot jail.
3. Download the source for other programs: wak + sbase (utils missing from toybox), zlib + bzip2 (compression tools), pdpmake + GNU Make, u-config (pkg-config implementation), and oksh (proper shell with set -e). These programs are compiled inside the chroot jail and are used later for building software.

If the script finished successfully you'll find a file named enter.sh in the chroot jail directory. Execute that file as superuser to enter the chroot jail.

---

Step 2 - Building TRX: trx.sh

This script is executed inside the chroot jail to build TRX and its dependencies. To enter the chroot jail execute the aforementioned enter.sh file as superuser.

This script also downloads some files, but it does so while inside the chroot jail and that may require some configuration. For convenience you may use the command from Step 1 on this script and download all the needed files beforehand.

Script outline:

1. Compile the X libraries (X prototypes, libXau, libX11, libXext, libXrender, libXRandR) for video output. I'm using old versions here but it doesn't matter because they are dynamically linked, so the game will use the ones on the player's machine anyway.
2. Compile ALSA (libasound) for sound output, dynamically linked. Players may have other sound backends on their machine (e.g. PulseAudio, PipeWire) but ALSA is always supported.
3. Compile glvnd (libGL) for 3D graphics, dynamically linked. glvnd in particular is nothing more than an OpenGL dispatcher, so the game will use the appropriate graphics libraries on the player's machine.
4. Compile SDL2, statically linked. Not all distros have a recent SDL version so static linking is strongly recommended here.
5. Compile zlib, PCRE2, and uthash. All statically linked.
6. Compile FFmpeg, statically linked. No external codecs are needed for TRX so this is a "vanilla" build.
7. Compile TRX (tr1). I'm actually not using Meson here! The meson.build files in this repo are small enough that I can trivially translate them to Makefiles and use those instead. Using Meson is still possible but requires more steps, I could outline them in a separate post if there's interest.

The compiled game will be placed in opt/TR1X/ with the corresponding data files from this repo. I have attached my game executable for reference, it should be identical to the one built on your machine.

[Toumlab]

Hi absolutelynothinghere!

You're a genius! I was able to successfully run your 1st bash script using Linux Mint 20.3 Mate (Inside a Qemu-KVM virtual machine :))
Unfortunately, when I tried to run the second bash script inside the chroot, i got the following error message:
sh: tmp/myroot/tmp/trx.sh: not found

And no luck with sudo:
sh: sudo: not found

I guess sudo has not been installed in the chroot...

[absolutelynothinghere]

@Toumlab When you are inside the chroot jail, you are acting as the root user so there is no sudo. To execute the second script while inside the chroot, simply run sh /tmp/trx.sh

The path /tmp/myroot/ on your machine is translated to / inside the chroot jail, so /tmp/myroot/tmp becomes just /tmp ... I hope this is clear, let me know if you encounter any problems.

[Toumlab]

Hi Absolutelynothinghere!
Yes, your instructions are crystal clear! (I have only used a chroot environment once in the past :))
So, I finally launched the second script, but it didn't work out of the box, as Curl couldn't resolve the first host needed to get libtirpc - for some obscure reason... I then realized that none of the 25 libraries needed (including TR1X!!) could be resolved by Curl.
I ended up downloading the 25 libraries manually (without "un-taring" them) and placed them in the chroot tmp directory.
I then added a comment for each line containing a download URL in the trx.sh script and ran the script again, and it was a big success this time!
At some point, hopefully soon, I will modify your scripts in order to be able to compile TR2X!
Many, many thanks for your help - really appreciated.

[absolutelynothinghere]

Happy to help 😁 if you need a hand with that TR2 script sometime let me know.

P.S. you don't need to comment the curl lines in the script, it will automatically carry on if the files are already downloaded!

[Toumlab]

Thanks again for your help!
I tried to run my script tr2x.sh.txt to compile TR2X using the latest asset but it failed with a 'too many errors' msg.
Can you please check my script to see what's wrong with it?

[absolutelynothinghere]

Hello again!
I checked the tr2x script and made some corrections, however there are still errors that are better discussed with the repo owners. I'm gonna be using TR2X version 0.8 so everyone is looking at the same code.

1. You need to include all the source files listed in meson.build, as some were missing.

2. You need to change the defined TR version to 2: -DTR_VERSION=2

3. The tr2 code uses the __unaligned specifier which is not recognized by the compiler, I don't recognize it either but a quick search tells me it's safe to ignore. So by adding -D__unaligned= to the CFLAGS the compilation resumed.

4. At this point there are errors related to the codebase itself which I was unable to debug:

   In file included from decomp/decomp.c:34:
   ./global/vars.h:89:8: error: unknown type name 'PALETTEENTRY'
      89 | extern PALETTEENTRY g_GamePalette16[256];
         |        ^
   decomp/decomp.c:423:30: error: no member named 'timer' in 'LEVEL_STATS'
     423 |     g_SaveGame.current_stats.timer = 0;
         |     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ^
   decomp/decomp.c:424:30: error: no member named 'kills' in 'LEVEL_STATS'
     424 |     g_SaveGame.current_stats.kills = 0;
         |     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ^
   decomp/decomp.c:425:30: error: no member named 'distance' in 'LEVEL_STATS'
     425 |     g_SaveGame.current_stats.distance = 0;
         |     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ^
   decomp/decomp.c:426:30: error: no member named 'ammo_hits' in 'LEVEL_STATS'
     426 |     g_SaveGame.current_stats.ammo_hits = 0;
         |     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ^
   decomp/decomp.c:427:30: error: no member named 'ammo_used' in 'LEVEL_STATS'
     427 |     g_SaveGame.current_stats.ammo_used = 0;
         |     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ^
   decomp/decomp.c:428:30: error: no member named 'medipacks' in 'LEVEL_STATS'
     428 |     g_SaveGame.current_stats.medipacks = 0;
         |     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ^
   

Hopefully the TRX developers can help us with this.

[Toumlab]

Hi Absolutelynothinghere!

and thank you again for your commitment :)
I'll try your corrected script to build TR2X version 0.8 and see if I get the same results (I should) :)
TRX developers, we need your help!