Here, lemme repost this for those who want to compile their own builds or otherwise tinker:
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Compiling the latest CVS version of DOSbox under win2K/XP using only free tools
(A guide for newbies written by a newbie)
(from the original thread posted 2003.07.29 on the old SF forums)
BIG IRRITATING DISCLAIMER #1: the CVS versions of DOSbox are completely and totally unsupported, so DON'T bug the creators of this fine program with any problems you might be having with this. If you can successfully compile the program, you're probably not a complete feeb so this should be common sense.
BIG IRRITATING DISCLAIMER #2: I myself am a complete newcomer to most of this stuff, so if any steps in this tutorial are wrong, please chime in with the correct procedure. This is simply what worked for me, so your mileage may well vary.
*ahem*
First grab the latest version of the DOSbox source. You can either download a checkout from the CVS servers here at SourceForge (poke around SF.net for info on how to do this and what software you'll need) or there's an archive of the same thing that seems to be updated fairly often here:
http://pcnwstage.phys.rug.nl/dosboxcvs.tgz
Download this and extract it to its own dir. DOSbox uses SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) for all kinds of snazzy crap so you'll also need the source for that as well, which can be found here:
http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-1.2.5.zip
Download that and extract it to a different dir. Now all we need is some software with which to compile. MinGW is a spiffy and most importantly free suite of tools for doing just that. Grab the latest version here:
http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MinGW-3.0.0-rc3.exe?download
and also something called MSYS, or Minimal SYStem, which is an environment in which you can run configure scripts, etc. get it here:
http://prdownloads.sf.net/mingw/MSYS-1.0.9.exe?download
I installed MinGW first, and then MSYS, so you should do so as well. MSYS will ask you where MinGW is installed, give it the proper path. When both tools are installed, run MSYS.BAT from the dir in which you installed MSYS. A little UNIXy window will pop up. First navigate to the dir (you may have to back up to the root first and then changedir to the appropriate drive letter) in which you extracted the SDL source, then type:
./configure
A bunch of stuff will happen. once you see the prompt again, type:
make
and then once that's done (it takes a while) type:
make install
We're almost ready to compile DOSbox, but first we need to tell DOSbox where to find the SDL library goodness that we just compiled. The way I did it is I set my system's PATH variable to include the dir where SDL is. My kludgey way of doing that was: type SET and then in the barf that follows find the line that beings PATH='. Left-click and drag to select that entire line (it may in fact encompass multiple lines, get them too) and then left click again on the selected block to *copy* it. Then go back to the command line and shift-leftclick to paste the text. Edit the last bit to include the path where the compiled SDL.DLL ended up, so that the statement looks something like (the earlier entries WILL vary):
$ PATH='.:/usr/local/bin:/mingw/bin:/bin:/c/WINNT/system32:/c/WINNT:c/sdl-1.2.5/src/.libs'
Make sure there's a : between the next-to-last entry and the SDL one you add, and close it off with a single ' mark. Then hit enter.
Change to the dir where the DOSbox source is. As before, type:
./configure
and then once that's done, type:
make
to compile a useable DOSbox binary. If it aborts and gives you an error message about SDL during the ./configure phase, something with SDL went wrong, so make sure that SDL compiled and installed properly, and make sure that your PATH environment variable is set correctly as detailed above.
[EDIT: There used to be a gotcha with drive_cache.cpp, but it was fixed. Yayy!]
If all goes well, you should now have a file called DOSBOX.EXE sitting in /dosbox/src. Copy that to some other folder along with the version of SDL.DLL you compiled (actually I was able to use the older, faster version of SDL.DLL from the official 0.58 release of DOSbox). Take it for a spin with the old game of your choice! With the version I compiled yesterday I was able to run "Syndicate" and "Twinsen's Adventure".
