First of all, if you're on Gentoo Linux or some othe Portage-based system,
then there's no need to continue; you can find QTads ebuilds in the
"interactive-fiction" overlay; simply add it with the "layman" utility and
then emerge the "games-engines/qtads" package.


QTads uses qmake as its build system.  To build it:

  cd <directory where you unpacked the QTads sources>
  qmake
  make

This will create a "qtads" binary which you can then copy and run from
anywhere.  There are no files that need to be installed.

For it to build correctly, you will need to have the needed libraries along
with their development headers/tools installed.  At this time, this would be:

  Qt4 "Core" and "GUI" modules
  Qt4 development tools (qmake, uic, etc.)
  SDL
  SDL_mixer
  SDL_sound

Most Linux distributions provide the development versions in packages that have
"-dev" appended to the package name.  On Ubuntu and Debian, it is usually enough
to install the following packages in order to be able to build QTads:

  libqt4-dev
  libsdl-mixer1.2-dev
  libsdl-sound1.2-dev

Debian Lenny users should note that even though QTads will build and run with
Qt 4.4 (Lenny only offers that version), the results will be less than
satisfactory.  For good results, Qt 4.5 or higher is recommended.