To run OpenRA, several files are needed from the original game disks. A minimal asset pack can also be downloaded and installed by the game.

The following lists per-platform dependencies required to build from source.

Windows

Compiling OpenRA requires the following dependencies:

• Windows PowerShell >= 4.0 (included by default in recent Windows 10 versions)
• .NET Framework 4.7.2 (Developer Pack) (or via Visual Studio 2017)
• .NET Core 2.2 SDK (or via Visual Studio 2017)

To compile OpenRA, open the OpenRA.sln solution in the main folder, build it from the command-line with MSBuild or use the Makefile analogue command make all scripted in PowerShell syntax.

Run the game with launch-game.cmd. It can be handed arguments that specify the exact mod one wishes to run, for example, run launch-game.cmd Game.Mod=ra to launch Red Alert, launch-game.cmd Game.Mod=cnc to start Tiberian dawn or launch-game.cmd Game.Mod=d2k to launch Dune 2000.

Linux

Mono, version 5.18 or later, is required to compile OpenRA. You can add the upstream mono repository for your distro to obtain the latest version if your system packages are not sufficient.

To compile OpenRA, run make from the command line. After this one can run the game with ./launch-game.sh. It is also possible to specify the mod you wish to run from the command line, e.g. with ./launch-game.sh Game.Mod=ts if you wish to try the experimental Tiberian Sun mod.

The default behaviour on the x86_64 architecture is to download several pre-compiled native libraries using the Nuget packaging manager. If you prefer to use system libraries, compile instead using make TARGETPLATFORM=unix-generic.

If you choose to use system libraries, or your system is not x86_64, you will need to install the following using your system package manager:

• SDL 2
• FreeType
• OpenAL
• liblua 5.1

Type sudo make install for system-wide installation. Run sudo make install-linux-shortcuts to get startup scripts, icons and desktop files. You can then run the Red Alert by executing the openra-ra command, the Dune 2000 mod by running the openra-d2k command and Tiberian Dawn by the openra-cnc command. Alternatively, you can also run these mods by clicking on their desktop shortcuts if you ran sudo make install-linux-shortcuts.

Arch Linux

It is important to note there is an unofficial openra-git package in the Arch User Repository (AUR) of Arch Linux. If manually compiling is the way you wish to go the build and runtime dependencies can be installed with:

sudo pacman -S mono openal libgl freetype2 sdl2 lua51 xdg-utils zenity

Debian/Ubuntu

The mono packages in the Ubuntu < 19.04 and Debian < 10 repositories are too old to support OpenRA.

See the instructions under the Linux section above to upgrade mono using the upstream releases if needed.

sudo apt install mono-devel libfreetype6 libopenal1 liblua5.1-0 libsdl2-2.0-0 xdg-utils zenity wget

Fedora

The mono packages in the Fedora repositories are too old to support OpenRA.

See the instructions under the Linux section above to upgrade mono using the upstream releases.

sudo dnf install "pkgconfig(mono)" SDL2 freetype "lua = 5.1" openal-soft xdg-utils zenity

Gentoo

sudo emerge -av dev-lang/mono dev-dotnet/libgdiplus media-libs/freetype:2 media-libs/libsdl2 media-libs/openal virtual/jpeg virtual/opengl '=dev-lang/lua-5.1.5*' x11-misc/xdg-utils gnome-extra/zenity

Mageia

sudo dnf install "pkgconfig(mono)" SDL2 freetype "lib*lua5.1" "lib*freetype2" "lib*sdl2.0_0" openal-soft xdg-utils zenity

openSUSE

sudo zypper in mono-devel openal-soft freetype2 SDL2 lua51 xdg-utils zenity

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and rebuilds, e.g. CentOS)

The EPEL repository is required in order for the following command to run properly.

sudo yum install "pkgconfig(mono)" SDL2 freetype "lua = 5.1" openal-soft xdg-utils zenity

macOS

Before compiling OpenRA you must install the following dependencies:

• Mono >= 5.18

To compile OpenRA, run make from the command line. Run with ./launch-game.sh.

The default behaviour is to download several pre-compiled native libraries using the Nuget packaging manager. If you prefer to use system libraries, compile instead using make TARGETPLATFORM=unix-generic. If you choose to use system libraries you will need to install:

• SDL 2 (brew install sdl2)
• FreeType (brew install freetype)
• OpenAL (brew install openal-soft)
• liblua 5.1 (brew install lua@5.1)