Install NPL Runtime

You can redistribute NPLRuntime side-by-side with your scripts and resource files on windows/linux/iOS, etc. However, this section is only about installing NPL runtime to your development computer and setting up a recommended coding environment for NPL.

Install on Windows

Install from Windows Installer

It is very easy to install on windows. The win32 executable of NPL runtime is currently released in two forms, choose one that is most suitable to you:

  • 32bits/64bits most recent development version (recommended for standalone application or module dev). Click to download
  • Official stable version released in ParacraftSDK (recommended for paracraft mod dev). See below.

Paracraft is an IDE written completely in NPL. Follow the steps:

  • Download ParacraftSDK
    • or you can clone it with following commands (you need git installed):
# clone repository & sub modules
git clone https://github.com/LiXizhi/ParaCraftSDK.git
cd ParaCraftSDK
git submodule init
git submodule update
# Go into the repository
cd ParaCraftSDK
# install paracraft
redist\paracraft.exe
# install NPLRuntime
NPLRuntime\install.bat
  • redist\paracraft.exe will install the most recent version of Paracraft to ./redist folder
    • if you failed to install, please manually download from Paracraft and copy all files to redist folder.
  • Inside ./NPLRuntime/install.bat
    • The NPL Runtime will be copied from ./redist folder to ./NPLRuntime/win/bin
    • The above path will be added to your %path% variable, so that you can run npl script from any folder.

Update NPL Runtime to latest version

  • If you use NPLRuntime installer, simply download and reinstall it here
  • If you use paracraftSDK, we regularly update paracraft (weekly) on windows platform, you can update to latest version of NPL Runtime following following steps.
    • run redist\paracraft.exe to update paracraft’s NPL runtime in redist folder
    • run NPLRuntime\install.bat to copy NPL runtime executable from redist to NPLRuntime/win/bin folder
  • Compiling from source code is always the latest version (recommended for serious developers), see next section.

On 64bits version

To build 64bits version of NPLRuntime, you need to build from source code (see next section), or download prebuild version from http://www.paracraft.cn.

Our current build target for public users is still 32bits on windows platform.

Please note that all compiled and non-compiled NPL/lua code can be loaded by both 32bits/64bits version of NPL runtime across all supported platforms (windows/linux/mac/android/ios) etc. However, if you use any C++ plugins (such as mysql, mono, etc), they must be built for each platform and CPU architecture.

Install on Windows From Source

see .travis.yml or our build output for reference
  • You need to download and build boost from source code. Version 1.55.0 and 1.60.0 are tested,but the latest version should be fine. Suppose you have unzipped the boost to D:\boost, you can build with following command.
bootstrap
b2 --build-type=complete

and then add a system environment variable called BOOST_ROOT, with value D:\boost(or where your boost is located), so that our build-tool will find boost for you.

git clone https://github.com/LiXizhi/NPLRuntime.git
  • Download cmake, and build either server or client version. They share the same code base but with different cmakelist.txt; client version has everything server has plus graphics API.
    • Server version: run NPLRuntime/NPLRuntime/CMakeList.txt in NPLRuntime/bin/win32 folder (any folder is fine, but do not use the cmakelist.txt source folder), please refer to ./build_win32.bat for details
    • Client version: run NPLRuntime/Client/CMakeList.txt in NPLRuntime/bin/Client folder (any folder is fine, but do not use the cmakelist.txt source folder)
      • REQUIRED: Install latest DirectX9 SDK in default location here.
      • There is also a cmake option called ParaEngineClient_DLL which will build NPLRuntime as shared library, instead of executable.
  • If successful, you will have visual studio solution files generated. Open it with visual studio and build.
  • The final executable is in ./ParaWorld/bin/ directory.

How to Debug NPLRuntime C++ source code

When you build NPLRuntime from source code, all binary file(dlls) are automatically copied to ./ParaWorld/bin/ directory. All debug version files have _d appended to the end of the dll or exe files, such as sqlite_d.dll, etc.

To debug your application, you need to start your application using the executable in ./ParaWorld/bin/, such as paraengineclient_d.exe. You also need to specify a working directory where your application resides, such as ./redist folder in ParacraftSDK. Alternatively, one can also copy all dependent *_d.dll files from ./ParaWorld/bin/ to your application’s working directory.

Applications written in NPL are usually in pure NPL scripts. So you can download and install any NPL powered application (such as this one ), and set your executable’s working directory to it before debugging from source code. ParacraftSDK also contains a good collection of example NPL programs. Please see the video at [[TutorialWebSite]] for install guide.

Install on Linux

Click here to download precompiled NPL Runtime linux 64bits release.

Under linux, it is highly recommended to build NPL from source code with latest packages and build tools on your dev/deployment machine.

git clone https://github.com/LiXizhi/NPLRuntime.git
git submodule init && git submodule update
  • Install third-party packages and latest build tools.
    • see .travis.yml or our build output for reference (on debian/ubuntu). In most cases, you need gcc 4.9 or above, cmake, bzip2, boost, libcurl. Optionally, you can install mysql, mono, postgresql if want to build NPL plugins for them.
  • Run ./build_linux.sh from the root directory. Be patient to wait for build to complete.
./build_linux.sh
Please note, you need to have at least 2GB memory to build with gcc, or you need to step up swap memory
  • The final executable is in ./ParaWorld/bin64/ directory. A symbolic link to the executable is created in /usr/local/bin/npl, so that you can run NPL script from anywhere.

Install on MAC OSX

We use cmake to build under MAC OSX, it is very similar to install on linux, but you should use

./build_mac_server.sh

Currently, only server version is working on mac, client version is still under development.

Editors and Debuggers

You can use your preferred editors that support lua syntax highlighting. NPL Runtime has a built-in web server called [[NPL Code Wiki|NPLCodeWiki]], it allows you to edit and debug via HTTP from any web browser on any platform.

  • [[NPL Code Wiki|NPLCodeWiki]]: build-in debugger and editor.

It is though highly recommended that you install NPL Runtime on windows, and use following editors:

We have developed several useful open-source NPL language plugins for visual studio products: In visual studio, select menu::Tools::Extensions, and search online for npl to install following plugins:

NPL language service

Editors

Example Code

ParacraftSDK contains many example projects written in NPL.