Skip to content

BUILDING.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
89 lines (56 loc) · 3.66 KB

BUILDING.md

File metadata and controls

89 lines (56 loc) · 3.66 KB
Raw

How to build netcode

netcode builds with CMake (3.16 or later) on Windows, MacOS and Linux.

libsodium is vendored in this repository, so there is nothing else to install.

Building on MacOS and Linux

Go to the command line under the netcode directory and enter:

cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --parallel

Run the unit tests:

ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure

Then you can run binaries like this:

./build/bin/test
./build/bin/server
./build/bin/client

For a debug build, use -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug and a separate build directory, e.g. -B build-debug.

Installing, shared libraries, and system libsodium

By default netcode builds as a static library against the vendored libsodium subset, and nothing needs to be installed. For packaging (e.g. homebrew), three options change that:

cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
    -DNETCODE_SYSTEM_SODIUM=ON \
    -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON
cmake --build build --parallel
cmake --install build --prefix /some/prefix
  • NETCODE_SYSTEM_SODIUM=ON links the system libsodium instead of the vendored copy (they are interchangeable — the vendored subset is a byte-identical slice of upstream).
  • BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON builds libnetcode as a shared library.
  • cmake --install installs netcode.h and the library (NETCODE_INSTALL=OFF disables the install target, e.g. when embedding netcode as a subproject).

Floating point: netcode builds with -ffp-contract=off

Estate policy for mas-bandwidth network libraries: builds are strict about floating point contraction. This build sets the right flag on every target, so nothing is required of you to build netcode itself:

  • GCC/Clang: -ffp-contract=off. Not merely the absence of -ffast-math — GCC's default is -ffp-contract=fast, which contracts across statement boundaries, and clang's default =on still fuses within a single expression.
  • MSVC: /fp:precise.

netcode's wire format carries no floating point, so no flag is required of consumers for correct wire bytes today. The strict build is the family floor: contraction is architecture-dependent (FMA is in the aarch64 baseline and absent from the x86-64 one), so float arithmetic near a wire diverges bit-wise between architectures without it. If you compile netcode.c into your own build rather than linking the library, carry the same flag.

Sanitizers and fuzzing

To build everything with AddressSanitizer and UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer, configure with -DNETCODE_SANITIZE=ON and run the tests as usual:

cmake -B build-asan -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DNETCODE_SANITIZE=ON
cmake --build build-asan --parallel
ctest --test-dir build-asan --output-on-failure

Fuzz harnesses for the untrusted-input surface live in fuzz/ and are built with -DNETCODE_FUZZ=ON. See fuzz/README.md for details.

Building on Windows

You need Visual Studio to build the source code. If you don't have Visual Studio you can download the community edition for free.

Go to the command line under the netcode directory and type:

cmake -B build
cmake --build build --config Release

Run the unit tests:

ctest --test-dir build --build-config Release --output-on-failure

Binaries are placed under build\bin\Release (or build\bin\Debug for --config Debug).

If you prefer working inside Visual Studio, open the generated build\netcode.sln and build and run the projects from there.

If you have questions please create an issue at https://github.com/mas-bandwidth/netcode and I'll do my best to help you out.

cheers

  • Glenn