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Once your toolchain is in place (see Prerequisites), building BestClient is a matter of running a small set of CMake and Ninja commands. The project uses an out-of-source build model — all generated files land in a dedicated directory you name, keeping the source tree clean. This guide walks through cloning, the quick debug build you will use day-to-day, the CI-style build that automatically fetches GTest, running the test suite, and the headless client build used for server-side and automated testing.

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Build Steps

1

Clone the repository and initialize submodules

Clone BestClient and pull in all vendored dependencies in one go:
git clone https://github.com/BestProjectTeam/BestClient.git
cd BestClient
git submodule update --init --recursive
The recursive submodule step is mandatory — CMake will fail at configure time if bundled library paths are missing. See Prerequisites → Git Submodules for details.
2

Quick debug build

This is the fastest path from a clean checkout to a working binary. It skips packaging artifacts (-DDEV=ON) and compiles in Debug mode for shorter link times and full debug symbols:
cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DDEV=ON
cmake --build build --target everything
The everything target compiles the client, server, and all tools in one pass. The resulting client binary is placed inside build/.
Speed up compilation on multi-core machines by passing -j$(nproc) (Linux/macOS) or -j%NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS% (Windows) to the build step:
cmake --build build --target everything -j$(nproc)
Ninja also auto-detects available cores by default, so explicit -j flags are usually only needed to cap or override parallelism.
3

CI-like build with automatic GTest download

This mirrors the build used in automated pipelines. The -DDOWNLOAD_GTEST=ON flag tells CMake to fetch and compile GoogleTest from source if it is not already installed system-wide, enabling the full test suite without manual GTest setup:
cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DDOWNLOAD_GTEST=ON -DDEV=ON
cmake --build build --target everything
CMake will print Automatically downloading GTest to be able to run tests during configure if GTest was not found locally. Git must be available on your PATH for the download step to succeed.
4

Run the test suite

After building with GTest available (either installed or downloaded), execute all unit tests through the run_tests target:
cmake --build build --target run_tests
Test output is printed directly to the terminal. A passing run exits with code 0; any failure prints the failing test name and assertion detail.
5

Headless test build

The headless build compiles the client without any graphics subsystem (-DHEADLESS_CLIENT=ON). This is useful for running the full test suite in CI environments without a display server, or for verifying game logic in isolation:
cmake -S . -B headless -G Ninja -DHEADLESS_CLIENT=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DDOWNLOAD_GTEST=ON -DDEV=ON
cmake --build headless --target run_tests
Note the separate build directory (headless) — this keeps the headless artifacts isolated from your regular build/ directory so you can maintain both configurations side-by-side.

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CMake Flags Reference

FlagValuesDefaultDescription
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPEDebug / Release / RelWithDebInfo / MinSizeRelRelease (or Debug when DEV=ON)Controls optimization level, debug symbols, and NDEBUG macro. Use Debug during development and Release for distribution builds.
DEVON / OFFOFFSkips packaging-oriented steps (file-prefix-map remapping, ident stripping) and defaults the build type to Debug. Enable for all local development builds.
DOWNLOAD_GTESTON / OFFOFF (Linux/macOS); ON (Windows)When ON and GTest is not found on the system, CMake automatically clones and compiles GoogleTest via Git. Requires Git to be on PATH.
HEADLESS_CLIENTON / OFFOFFBuilds the client without a graphics backend (CONF_HEADLESS_CLIENT define). Disables window creation and rendering; used for headless test runs in CI.

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CMake Project Name Note

The CMake project is named TClient (project(TClient ...) in CMakeLists.txt), which is the upstream fork BestClient is built on. You will see TClient in CMake status output such as ******** TClient ******** during configure. This is expected — the built binary is still the full BestClient 1.9.1 beta client with all bc_* features intact. The project name in CMake does not affect the output binary name or any BestClient functionality.

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