How to build and test JSMESS 0.142

First, you need basic competency with building software on Linux. git and make shouldn't be foreign words. If they are, that's okay, there's other stuff you can do, just not this part.

JSMESS lives at http://github.com/jsmess/jsmess. Stop by and get the git clone URL from the text box at the bottom of the right column of the page.

Locally, do git clone whatever that URL was. Switch to the 0.142 release tag by typing:

git checkout tags/0.142

Then, make sure your system has the stuff described in Prerequisites and Dependencies for 0.142.

When that's done, test it by compiling something you know should work. Put a coleco.zip in bios and a Coleco game in games, and then make SYSTEM=colecovision NATIVE_DEBUG=1 to build it for your computer. (You can find that zip and a game by poking at the JavaScript source for the systems we've already built.)

That should give you a messcolecovision64 or something similar in mess that you can run using the same commandline that's in the javascript file we generate.

If that works, then you try the JS version with make SYSTEM=colecovision, and that'll put files in build/colecovision. Run make SYSTEM=colecovision test to start up a test web server.

While it's running, in another window, copy your game from games into build/colecovision. Edit build/colecovision/messloader.js to point to the game name.

Then, go to localhost:8000 and it should show up.

If all of that works, then you can try other things. See the GitHub JSMESS wiki home for more.