Creating a NES emulator in the jakt programming language.

JT has documented a lot of their work on Jakt NES Monster in a playlist on their YouTube channel, Systems with JT.

Make sure you have libsdl2+SDL2 headers installed, and build and install the jakt compiler into your PATH.

With jakt in your path and the install location of SDL2 known, you can build like so for Linux:

> jakt src/main.jakt -l SDL2 -I <path to Jakt runtime directory> -O -o jakt_nes

On macOS, you can use (be sure to update versions to match your SDL2 version):

> jakt src/main.jakt -l SDL2 -I /opt/homebrew/Cellar/sdl2/2.0.22/include -L /opt/homebrew/Cellar/sdl2/2.0.22/lib -I ../jakt/runtime -O -o jakt_nes

For Windows, keep reading into the CMake steps :^).

Instead of installing jakt into somewhere that's in your path, make sure to install jakt via the CMake build by setting CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX somewhere interesting, or passing --prefix on the command line . One decent option for prefix is "jakt-install".

jakt> cmake -B build -GNinja -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=jakt-install -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++
jakt> cmake --build build
jakt> cmake --install build
# alternative to setting CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX
jakt> cmake --install build --prefix jakt-test

After that, you can build jaktnesmonster by passing the location of jakt CMake files to CMake. CMake should find SDL2 automatically, if it's in a standard install location for your platform (Linux, macOS, other Unix).

> cmake -G Ninja -B build -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=../jakt/jakt-install -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++
> cmake --build build
# Alternatively
> ninja -C build

The easiest way to hook up SDL2 to CMake on windows is via vcpkg

Ensure that you have the VS 2019 or 2022 toolset installed, including clang. MSVC is not supported.

Perform the above jakt install steps from a VS Developer Powershell instance.

Next, install SDL2 via vcpkg from a VS Developer PowerShell instance:

git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git
cd vcpkg
.\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat
.\vcpkg install sdl2:x64-windows

Finally, configure jaktnesmonster with CMake, passing your Windows install of jakt, the vcpkg toolchain file, and clang++ as the C++ compiler:

cmake -B build -GNinja `
    -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="..\jakt\jakt-install\share" `
    -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE="..\vcpkg\scripts\buildsystems\vcpkg.cmake" `
    -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++

Now you can build jakt_nes.exe via

> cmake --build build

or

> ninja -C build

Alternatively, using Visual Studio directly to build, you can create a CMakeSettings.json similar to:

{
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "x64-Debug",
      "generator": "Ninja",
      "configurationType": "Debug",
      "inheritEnvironments": [ "clang_cl_x64_x64" ],
      "buildRoot": "${projectDir}\\out\\build\\${name}",
      "installRoot": "${projectDir}\\out\\install\\${name}",
      "cmakeCommandArgs": "-DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=\"..\\jakt\\jakt-install\\share\" ",
      "buildCommandArgs": "",
      "ctestCommandArgs": "",
      "cmakeToolchain": "..\\vcpkg\\scripts\\buildsystems\\vcpkg.cmake"
    }
  ]
}