Just a little help

Sorry, I know there's plenty of help around, but I'm new to UNIX, compiling, and coding. I've been reading and reading for the last 2 days but I'm not confident with UNIX yet.
I found a good reference to UNIX commands (finally) and have it ready on my HD. I still need assurance I'm about to do this right.
1.) Can I uncompress the source for SMAUG in ZIP form while in UNIX (BSD system) and still have it work? I'm not used to "untarring" tar files yet.
2.) What are the commands to show me what I have installed for editors and programs? I understand UNIX is supposed to have various editors and file viewers, but what do I have?

I can figure out the rest after I'm used to the fundamentals. What confuses me is the directory system. The help on compiling on this site referes to a "dist" and my system doesn't seem to have one, or I can't find it.

Please have patience.
System info: OS: PC BSD 1.0-rc2
Installed from CD.
CV SUP updated
Ports updated.

I'm afraid that this question is somewhat meaningless. You can only uncompress in the format in which the source comes.

If you have a tar.gz file (sometimes contracted to .tgz), then this is enough:
tar -xzf myarchive.tar.gz
If it's just a tar:
tar -xf myarchive.tar

It's not so bad once you get used to it. The 'x' means extract, the 'z' means use "GZip" compression (hence gz) and the 'f' means "from the following file".

If you really don't want to use tars, you'd need to find a zipped source archive.That depends immensely on your system. Chances are, you have one of vi or emacs. I strongly recommend using vi, since Nick has an excellent guide to it on this site.

http://www.gammon.com.au/smaug/vi.htm

Regarding the 'dist' directory:
You won't have a 'dist' directory until you've unzipped the SMAUG distribution archive.

Otherwise, the directory system works basically the same way as on Windows, at least, in the sense that it's a tree of directories. Just think of /home/username/ as "My Documents" or something like that.

OK, very good start. I had a suspiscion about the compressed files part and you confirmed it for me.

One more thing, because I'm working from the GUI provided and not from a system boot up, I'm having problems logging in as the administrator. I know my user name and password, wait never mind, I can use a "console" shell. It's starting to sink in.

Yes, I seem to remember vi or some other editor on this system.
Thanks ksilyan.

If I can manage to untar the package I can practice doing "make" with this system. I'm already familiar with nicks AreaEditor, so that's taken care of.

I did the tar -xzf and ended up with a single file called SmaugFUSS. I did a `ls -l SmaugFUSS' (file details) and it shows the files within it. Is that normal? Does it need to be uncompressed again? Or is that what I'll be using for "make"?

Ok, dumb me, I looked at SmaugFUSS and it was a locked folder, because I wasn't logged in with admin rights. Now I'm getting somewhere.

Either you can log in graphically as "root" (which is the administrator), or you can type "su -" as an administrator to log in.

That being said, unlike on Windows, on Unix systems you very rarely do your normal work as root. It's to avoid accidental screw-ups. The more time you spend in root, the more chances of typing something you didn't mean that'll mess up your install. Also, if programs are running as root, they have full access to your computer.That's good. It created a folder. You can then type "cd SmaugFUSS" to change into that folder. Normally, you'd first cd into SmaugFUSS, then you'd cd into src. That's where the making and all that takes place.

As general knowledge: typing "ls" will list the contents of the current directory. "ls -l" will list them, but giving you more information.That is strange. It suggests that you decompressed as root or some other user, and are trying to use it as another. It would be locked due to permission errors. It shouldn't be -- it should belong to your normal, working user.

To change ownership, you would open a console window and type something like:
chown -R myuser:myuser SmaugFUSS
where you replace "myuser" with your normal working name. I'm also assuming that SmaugFUSS is contained in your home directory. And that you're logged in as root before you do this.



Using, and of course sysadmin'ing a Unix system is hard work, but it's a whole world of fun once you get it going and start getting the hang of it. So just remember that you'll be rewarded for all this hard work and confusion later on! :)

Argyle! I need a break from UNIX. I'm tempted to set up BSD so that I'm logged in as system admin all the time. I find myself retranslating almost every command from DOS to UNIX in my head.
I tried my first MAKE but it failed. I didn't expect it to work because the makefile has to be doctored and I;m still trying to figure out the jargon used by the various help files I'm reading.
That VI is wierd to use. It doesn't show me anything when I edit a file (makefile), it has commands for doing everything I'm not used to. Later I'll use it on a normal doc and see how it works.
I'll take a break and try again. The errors I get during compile make no sense to me.

I think I'll switch to using cygwin for compiling. That way I eliminate the UNIX problem I'm having.
I need time to get used to a new OS. I still haven't gotten familiar with KDE or the other apps.
At least this way, I can follow the help section with more accuracy.
Nicks help in cygwin looks good.

I'd be a little worried about that. Chances are, you're not actually opening the file. Since you type "makefile" and not "Makefile", it's possible that you are not in fact opening the file, since Unix is case sensitive. So you get a blank document simply because you opened a new document.

But if you don't like vi and are in a graphical environment, you can probably just use KDE's text editor. I'm positive it has one even though I don't know how to get to is (I'm more of a gnome user, myself).That shouldn't be necessary, and in general is a fairly bad idea. But more importantly, it really shouldn't be the slightest bit necessary. If you think you need to do this, there's probably something you're not doing right. (like having incorrect permissions, because you unzipped as root but are trying to edit as your normal user.)This might not be a bad idea. At the moment you have a triple-whammy of sorts: learning to program, learning to compile, learning Unix... No need to make things more complicated than they need to.

Still, you should realize that Cygwin and Unix are really very, very similar. Instructions for Cygwin should apply almost exactly to Unix, except that you'd have to do things with Unix programs, not Windows. The point of Cygwin is after all to get Unix-like behavior on Windows.

Ok, I've made some progress except for some snags. SmaugFUSS compiles perfectly, not even a warning. But, AreaEditor doesn't recognise the area files. Smaug1.4a with MXP compiles with errors, and the suggested fixes in Nicks pages don't make any difference, and AreaEditor won't edit them.
All this is done in the Bash of Cygwin. All according to Nicks instructions. I must say, using the Bash has narrowed down what I need to do a lot.
I guess what I was hoping was to get a version of Smaug that compiles and fixes problems in the server and is editable in AreaEditor. Is that possible?

FUSS code has a different reset system that the older stock code. So any areas that have been saved online using that format will not be readable by any of the Smaug offline editor programs.

That being said, it is still possible to create the area using Area Editor, do whatever it is you need to do, then add it to your mud. FUSS will still read the old area format and translates it into the new one. Once you save it online though, AE won't be able to read it again.

Ok, I see what you mean. Herne has a pretty good help page on online editing. I might use that one. Of course, there are more helps available as well.
Might as well get used to online editing. :)