MAKEDEFS(6)

📦
version 5.0.0 · 2 versions
, in arch rolling

🛠️ MAKEDEFS 💅 (section 6, Games Manual)

okay bestie, gather round, because this one is a build-time legend and honestly it's giving backstage-pass energy 🎟️✨

💖 NAME

makedefs — the NetHack miscellaneous build-time functions, no cap 🧰

✨ SYNOPSIS

makedefs { -o | -d | -e | -m | -v | -p | -q | -r | -h }

makedefs --input file --output file --command

🌸 DESCRIPTION

makedefs is a build-time tool, and it's literally the behind-the-scenes main character for a whole bunch of NetHack(6) source file creation and modification tasks 🫶

For historical reasons (iykyk 😭), makedefs takes two types of command lines:

  • when you invoke it with a short option, the files it operates on are determined when makedefs is compiled 📦
  • when you invoke it with a long option, --input and --output are what specify the files for the --command 🎯

and here's the tea: each command is only available in one of the two formats. not both. pick your lane 🚦

🎀 SHORT COMMANDS

Upper and lower case are both accepted for the short commands, so go off however you like ✨

  • -o — generate onames.h 💖
  • -d — generate data.base 🍓
  • -e — generate dungeon.pdf. the input file dungeon.def gets passed through the same logic as the --grep command uses; peep the MDGREP FUNCTIONS section below for the details 👀
  • -m — generate date.h and the options file. it will read dat/gitinfo.txt, only if it is present, to obtain githash= and gitbranch= info and include the related preprocessor #defines in the date.h file 🔥
  • -p — generate pm.h 🌈
  • -q — generate the rumors file 🗣️
  • -s — generate the bogusmon, engrave, and epitaph files 🪦
  • -1 — generate the epitaph file ⭐
  • -2 — generate the engrave file ✍️
  • -3 — generate the bogusmon file 👾
  • -h — generate the oracles file 🔮

💅 LONG COMMANDS

  • --debug — show debugging output 🐛
  • --make [command] — execute a short command. the command is given without a preceding dash, mkay 🚫
  • --input file — specify the input file for the command (if needed). if the file is -, standard input is read 📥
  • --output file — specify the output file for the command (if needed). if the file is -, standard output is written 📤
  • --svs [delimiter] — generate a version string to standard output without a trailing newline. if specified, the delimiter is used between each part of the version string 🧵
  • --grep — filter the input file to the output file. see the MDGREP FUNCTIONS section below for info on controlling the filtering operation 🔍
  • --grep-showvars — show the name and value for each variable known to the grep option 📋
  • --grep-trace — turn on debug tracing for the grep function (--grep must be specified as well, don't forget bestie) 🕵️
  • --grep-defined symbol — exit shell true (0) if symbol is known and defined, otherwise exit shell false (1) ✅
  • --grep-define symbol — force the value of symbol to be "defined." symbol must already be known to makedefs 🌟
  • --grep-undef symbol — force the definition of symbol to be "undefined." symbol must already be known to makedefs 🌑

🦋 MDGREP FUNCTIONS

the --grep command (and certain other commands) filters their input, line by line, according to control lines embedded in the input and on information gleaned from the NetHack(6) configuration 🧚

this is how you get cute little things like platform-specific documentation embedded into the master documentation files ✨

📜 Rules

  • the default conditional state is printing enabled 🟢
  • any line NOT starting with a caret (^) is either suppressed or passed through unchanged, depending on the current conditional state 🔀
  • any line starting with a caret is a control line; as in C, zero or more spaces may be embedded in the line almost anywhere (except immediately after the caret); however the caret must be in column 1 📍
  • conditionals may be nested 🪆
  • makedefs will exit with an error code if any errors are detected; processing will continue (if it can) to allow as many errors as possible to be detected 🚨
  • unknown identifiers are treated as both TRUE and as an error. note that --undef or #undef in the NetHack(6) configuration are different from unknown ⚠️

🧾 Control lines

  • ^^ — a line starting with a (single) literal caret 💫
  • ^# — a comment 💬
  • ^?ID — if the ID is defined, set the conditional state to TRUE ✔️
  • ^!ID — if the ID is not defined, set the conditional state to TRUE 🔄
  • ^: — else; invert the conditional state 🙃
  • ^. — end the most recent conditional 🏁
lowkey important: those unknown-identifier rules are not the same as --undef or #undef, so don't conflate them or you will be confused and sad 😭

👑 AUTHOR

The NetHack Development Team 💜

This file is Copyright (C) Kenneth Lorber, 2024 for version NetHack-5:1.22. NetHack may be freely redistributed. See license for details. 📜

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🎀 one last little sign-off: this one's from the NETHACK corner of the world, dated 26 April 2026, and it lives in section 6 of the Games Manual — so if you ever need to find it again, that's where she'll be, slaying as always 💅✨🦋

📦 where this page comes from