Luanti (formerly Minetest)

Luanti is a free open-source voxel game engine with easy modding and game creation.

Copyright (C) 2010-2025 Perttu Ahola celeron55@gmail.com and contributors (see source file comments and the version control log)

Table of Contents

1. Further Documentation
2. Default Controls
3. Paths
4. Configuration File
5. Command-line Options
6. Compiling
7. Docker
8. Version Scheme

Further documentation

• Website: https://www.luanti.org/
• Wiki: https://wiki.luanti.org/
• Forum: https://forum.luanti.org/
• GitHub: https://github.com/luanti-org/luanti/
• Developer documentation
• doc/ directory of source distribution

Default controls

All controls are re-bindable using settings. Some can be changed in the key config dialog in the settings tab.

Paths

Locations:

• bin - Compiled binaries
• share - Distributed read-only data
• user - User-created modifiable data

Where each location is on each platform:

• Windows .zip / RUN_IN_PLACE source:
  • bin = bin
  • share = .
  • user = .
• Windows installed:
  • bin = C:\Program Files\Minetest\bin (Depends on the install location)
  • share = C:\Program Files\Minetest (Depends on the install location)
  • user = %APPDATA%\Minetest or %MINETEST_USER_PATH%
• Linux installed:
  • bin = /usr/bin
  • share = /usr/share/minetest
  • user = ~/.minetest or $MINETEST_USER_PATH
• macOS:
  • bin = Contents/MacOS
  • share = Contents/Resources
  • user = Contents/User or ~/Library/Application Support/minetest or $MINETEST_USER_PATH

Worlds can be found as separate folders in: user/worlds/

Configuration file

• Default location: user/minetest.conf
• This file is created by closing Luanti for the first time.
• A specific file can be specified on the command line: --config <path-to-file>
• A run-in-place build will look for the configuration file in location_of_exe/../minetest.conf and also location_of_exe/../../minetest.conf

Command-line options

• Use --help

Compiling

• Compiling - common information
• Compiling on GNU/Linux
• Compiling on Windows
• Compiling on MacOS

Docker

• Developing minetestserver with Docker
• Running a server with Docker

Version scheme

We use major.minor.patch since 5.0.0-dev. Prior to that we used 0.major.minor.

• Major is incremented when the release contains breaking changes, all other numbers are set to 0.
• Minor is incremented when the release contains new non-breaking features, patch is set to 0.
• Patch is incremented when the release only contains bugfixes and very minor/trivial features considered necessary.

Since 5.0.0-dev and 0.4.17-dev, the dev notation refers to the next release, i.e.: 5.0.0-dev is the development version leading to 5.0.0. Prior to that we used previous_version-dev.