DFHack basically extends what DF can do with something similar to the drop-down
console found in Quake engine games. On Windows, this is a separate command line
window. On Linux and OS X, the terminal used to launch the dfhack script is taken over
(so, make sure you start from a terminal). Basic interaction with dfhack
involves entering commands into the console. For some basic instructions,
use the ‘help’ command. To list all possible commands, use the ls command.
Many commands have their own help or detailed description. You can use
help command (or sometimes command help or command ?) to show that.
The command line has some nice line editing capabilities, including history that’s preserved between different runs of DF (use up/down keys to go through the history).
The second way to interact with DFHack is to bind the available commands to in-game hotkeys. The old way to do this is via the hotkey/zoom menu (normally opened with the ‘H’ key). Binding the commands is done by assigning a command as a hotkey name (with ‘n’).
A new and more flexible way is the keybinding command in the dfhack console. However, bindings created this way are not automatically remembered between runs of the game, so it becomes necessary to use the dfhack.init file to ensure that they are re-created every time it is loaded.
Interactive commands like ‘liquids’ cannot be used as hotkeys.
Most of the commands come from plugins. Those reside in ‘hack/plugins/’.