User:Aslantis/Java Minecraft on alt architectures
This guide is for getting Java Minecraft to function on a niche architecture or platform.
You might be thinking, what would be stopping it from just working? Java is a portable language anyways, right? Well the problem is Minecraft needs one library to function that's in native code: lwjgl. And if you take a look at their readme, you'll see their list of supported architectures is amazingly small (not even linux/mac x86 support!!).
Luckily, lwjgl3 can compile to more targets, even if it's unsupported. It works great on FreeBSD for instance, and also works well on the PowerPC ISA.
Note: not all versions of Minecraft were made for lwjgl3. Some were made for lwjgl2. I have yet to try to get that working on other platforms, but if you are trying to get 1.7.10 MC working, I highly recommend using lwjgl3ify instead. There is also legacy-lwjgl3 if you want to use legacy fabric. The first version of Minecraft to switch to lwjgl3 is 1.13.
Looking to just host a server? That relies on no native code! Just use the Minecraft server software of your choice. You still might benefit from using lwjgl3ify on the server if it's for 1.7.10, as it will allow higher Java versions to work than 8.
Support matrix
I will eventually add a fancy support matrix showing platform support, but lazy. Right now though, the only hard requirement I see is a little endian OS.
Getting started
Using multimc or one of its forks will be required. If you have no preference:
root #emerge --ask prismlauncherNext, bootstrapping lwjgl3 is needed.
actually i think imma just ebuild this I'll finish this after
External resources
- Raptor forum post describing the process