Quake Live Build Recapture

This document captures the toolchain evidence embedded in the retail Quake Live binaries, the containerized environments we assembled to mirror those configurations, and the current status of the build reproduction effort.

Captured binary metadata

The table below summarises the linker signatures, version resources, and PDB breadcrumbs that were harvested with tools/scripts/dump_toolchain_info.py.

Binary	Timestamp (UTC)	Linker	File version	PDB path	Linker flags
quakelive_steam.exe	2016-06-03	LINK 10.00	0.1.0.739	W:\quakelive_clean\quakelive_steam.pdb	/DYNAMICBASE /NXCOMPAT /TSAWARE
awesomium.dll	2014-03-28	LINK 10.00	1.7.4.2	C:\dev\chromium2\chromium\src\build\Release\awesomium.pdb	/DYNAMICBASE /NXCOMPAT
awesomium_process.exe	2014-03-28	LINK 10.00	1.7.4.1	C:\dev\chromium2\chromium\src\build\Release\awesomium_process.pdb	/DYNAMICBASE /NXCOMPAT /TSAWARE
libGLESv2.dll	2014-02-11	LINK 10.00	1.0.0.939	C:\dev\chromium2\chromium\src\build\Release\libGLESv2.pdb	/DYNAMICBASE /NXCOMPAT
libEGL.dll	2014-02-11	LINK 10.00	1.0.0.939	C:\dev\chromium2\chromium\src\build\Release\libEGL.pdb	/DYNAMICBASE /NXCOMPAT
avcodec-53.dll	2011-11-29	GNU ld 2.20	(no resource)	(missing)	/DYNAMICBASE /NXCOMPAT /NOSEH
avformat-53.dll	2011-11-29	GNU ld 2.20	(no resource)	(missing)	/DYNAMICBASE /NXCOMPAT /NOSEH
avutil-51.dll	2011-11-29	GNU ld 2.20	(no resource)	(missing)	/DYNAMICBASE /NXCOMPAT /NOSEH

Full JSON output, including CodeView GUIDs and DLL characteristics, lives at references/analysis/quakelive_toolchain_metadata.json for scripted reuse.

Additional observations:

• quakelive_steam.exe carries a Rich header showing VC++ 2010 object contributions, confirming the MSVC10 lineage implied by the 10.00 linker version and /DYNAMICBASE profile. The embedded application manifest still references Microsoft.VC80.CRT, so a legacy CRT redistributable must be staged alongside the VS2010 toolset.
• The third-party Chromium-derived components (awesomium*, libEGL.dll, libGLESv2.dll) point to a Windows build host at C:\dev\chromium2, giving us the directory layout that upstream scripts expect.
• The FFmpeg 0.8-era DLLs were built with MinGW32 binutils 2.20 and stripped of PDB data, so symbol repro requires building our own debug variants.

Containerized toolchains

Two container definitions have been added under tools/containers/:

• msvc-2010.Dockerfile (Windows container): provisions Visual Studio 2010 Professional and the Windows 7.1 SDK on top of mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore:ltsc2019, exposing an x86 vcvars32 shell that matches the 10.00 linker observed in the game executable and Chromium-derived helpers.
• mingw-ld220.Dockerfile (Linux container): builds GNU binutils 2.20 for the i686-w64-mingw32 target so MinGW-based projects can link with the same vintage tools used for the bundled FFmpeg DLLs while reusing Debian’s modern GCC front-end.

Both Dockerfiles can be built with the standard docker build -f <file> . workflow. The MSVC image requires a Windows host (or Windows container support) and will download large Microsoft installers during the build; the MinGW image builds entirely from open-source components on Linux.

Reproduction status

1. Visual C++ pipeline

   • Build the Windows container: docker build -f tools/containers/msvc-2010.Dockerfile -t quakelive/msvc10 .
   • Launch the developer prompt: docker run -it --rm quakelive/msvc10.
   • Inside the shell, verify the linker version with link /? and confirm it reports 10.00 to match the retail binaries. Install the legacy VC80 CRT redistributable before attempting a full game build to satisfy the manifest dependency.

2. Chromium/Awesomium components

   • Reuse the MSVC container; the PDB paths show a monorepo rooted at C:\dev\chromium2. Recreate this layout inside the container and point the Awesomium build scripts at it. Vendor drops are versioned 1.7.4.x, so use the SDK matching those versions to avoid ABI drift.

3. FFmpeg MinGW pipeline

   • Build the Linux container: docker build -f tools/containers/mingw-ld220.Dockerfile -t quakelive/mingw220 .
   • Run the environment and ensure /opt/toolchain/bin precedes the Debian MinGW tools so ld --version yields 2.20.
   • Rebuild FFmpeg 0.8.x with the exact configuration flags used by Awesomium (still TODO—no command-line artefacts survived). Enable debug symbols to recover usable PDBs.

Outstanding mismatches / follow-ups

• CRT manifest skew – Retail binaries request the VC80 CRT while linking with VC10; verify at build time that the legacy redistributable is installed, or adjust manifests if newer CRTs are acceptable.
• Missing FFmpeg build recipes – No linker command line or configure cache survived in the DLLs; reverse-engineer the compilation flags from the shipped binaries (e.g. by diffing exported symbols) before attempting a rebuild.
• Unsigned PDB stubs – All PDB references point to local developer paths and age 1; confirm whether symbol servers ever hosted official PDBs or if we must archive freshly generated ones during the recapture process.