Copyright (c) Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, 2026.

README

Thank you for trying out ABC!
In this document, you will find instructions on how to build and run it.
If you are looking to make a distribution binary yourself, go to the "DISTRIBUTION.md" file.
If you are looking to run the test suite, go to the "TESTS.md" file.

DEPENDENCIES

• ncurses 6 (with dev headers): gets you termcap and termcap compatibility (this provides termcap headers too)
• GCC version 14 or higher, or Clang version 18 or higher (on older versions you will struggle with C23 support)
• GNU make

HOW TO INSTALL DEPENDENCIES

Dependencies for Ubuntu

When compiling a 64-bit executable:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libncurses-dev

When compiling a 32-bit executable:

sudo apt-get install build-essential gcc-multilib lib32ncurses-dev

Dependencies for MacOS

Compilation for 64-bit platforms only. Requires Homebrew; instructions found on the official Homebrew page: text

Install ncurses via Homebrew:

brew install ncurses

Install GCC via Homebrew (if not already installed):

brew install gcc

Check your GCC version by running:

ls /opt/homebrew/bin/gcc*

Look for a folder named /opt/homebrew/bin/gcc-xx, where xx is the current version number. This will tell you the GCC version you are running. When compiling, make sure to:

1. Manually set the CC flag to the GCC version present on your computer;
2. Manually set the SYSTEM flag to macos.

Dependencies for Windows

TODO: Write

HOW TO RUN

1. Install dependencies (or, if you already have them, check that your versions are recent enough)

   Read the instructions under HOW TO INSTALL DEPENDENCIES

2. Change directory to src/

   cd src/
   

3. Compile everything

   make all
   

   If you want to compile 32-bit instead:

   make all BIT=32
   

   Or, if you are compiling on a system which uses a custom compiler and system configuration (on MacOS, gcc-15) instead of the default one:

   make all CC=gcc-15 SYSTEM=macos
   

   Set the gcc-version to your current installed version.

   Note

   If you have previously built ABC for a different architecture (eg. 32-bit vs 64-bit), you need to clean up the build artifacts before compiling to another architecture.

4. Run ABC

   ./abc
   

When you want to clean up the compilation artifacts, run

make clean

Create Dynamic Distribution Build for MacOS

1. Go to the src/ folder

   cd src/
   

2. Build the project with the strip flag

   make all CC=gcc-15 SYSTEM=macos EXTRA_FLAGS=-s
   

3. Strip the executables

   strip abc abckeys
   

4. Make a new folder to put the necessary files in

   mkdir temp
   

5. Open Finder and copy abc, abc.1, abc.hlp, abc.msg and abckeys from src into the newly created temp folder.

6. Open Disk Utility and go to File > New Image > Image from Folder.

7. Select the temp folder you created.

8. Save it under the name ABC-v1.00.06-rc1.