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Many issues when using nmake to compile NetHack with curses interface on Windows #1578
Description
When a user follows the documentation path (README → sys/windows/Install.windows → sys/windows/build-nmake.txt) to build NetHack with curses support using nmake, several confusing points and tool bugs are encountered.
- fetch.cmd is broken, it does not actually fetch anything, due to cmd's variable expansion rules. To fix this, add
setlocal enabledelayedexpansionat the top of fetch.cmd and change %VAR% to !VAR!. - In Makefile.nmake, even with
WANT_CURSES=Y, pdcursesmod is never auto-fetched, while Lua is always auto-fetched. BothWANT_CURSESandADD_CURSESexist in Makefile.nmake, but their usage is confusing. I think they are mistakenly swapped in some places, making it impossible to ever fetch pdcursesmod, so users will always get binary without curses interface.
Are these issues by design, or are they unintended bugs? A reply would be much appreciated. If changes are needed, I can submit a PR cuz I have successfully built a curses-enabled binary on Windows 11.
Activity
nhmall commentedon Jun 10, 2026
I’ll look into it. I always just use
nmake git=1and I haven’t had any issues with that, so I was not aware of issues with the other approaches. I always get curses included.
Thanks for reporting.
0xb1aded commentedon Jun 11, 2026
I made modifications in my fork to compile a binary with curses interface on Windows successfully. But those changes were my own assumptions, I wasn't sure about the original design intentions of these tools/vars. However under my modification in fix/nmake-auto-fetch-pdcursesmod, there is an additional issue: The first compilation always fails at wintty.c (NMAKE : fatal error U1073: don't know how to make "objpdctxt\x64\pdcclip.o"). Only by executing
nmake cleanand thennmake packageafter this error can it succeed. Perhaps my edits and info can help you locate the problem more quickly.https://github.com/0x0b1ade/NetHack/tree/fix/fetch.cmd
https://github.com/0x0b1ade/NetHack/tree/fix/nmake-auto-fetch-pdcursesmod