[Ohrrpgce] Distribute menu Linux tarball

[Ralph Versteegen]

Yes, that would be nice. How many GNU/Linux users can actually install .deb
files without manually extracting files out anyway?

As you said, it's not necessary to statically link the binaries, we can set
a link flag to look in the same directory as the executable (or some other
relative directory) for shared libraries with "gcc -Wl,-rpath,'$ORIGIN'"

Statically linking them would have the benefit of reducing the total
package size though.

I looked at how several Linux games I had were packaged/distributed.
Almost all of them included separate binaries for x86 and for x64, though
Jason Rohrer only distributed 32 bit binaries and when I pointed out to him
that none of his games would work on non-multilib 64 bit linux (e.g. Ubuntu
by default) he said no one had complained (but I think his games
distributed via steam should always run, since steam provides a full set of
libraries).

Almost everyone included .sos for SDL/SDL2 and other SDL libraries if they
used them, as well as libraries like GLEW
A few of the games included libstdc++.so.X or libgcc_s or similiar
A few included libogg, etc.
Nobody seemed to have statically linked anything such as libc or other
common libraries
Steam includes heaps of libraries to emulate Ubuntu 12.04 that override
many of the system ones; on Slackware certain games would not run until I
deleted this whole lot.

Since we don't even support x64 yet, I suggest just including libSDL and
libSDL_mixer and calling it a day. Probably a bad idea to statically link
anything.

On 7 July 2015 at 08:23, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:

> So today I was reading some docs about Steam for Linux, and trying to
> figure out what files are needed.
>
> That reminded me of an earlier idea that had fallen by the wayside, which
> was to allow export of a Linux Tarball equivalent to the Windows Zip from
> the DIstribute menu.
>
> Superficially it should be pretty simple. It just needs include a renamed
> copy of the ohrrpgce-game executable, and exclude the .dll files that are
> normally in the windows zip.
>
> What about libraries? All we really need is SDL and SDL_mixer. Is it
> reasonable to just let people deal with that themselves? Like "If you are
> downloading a linux tarball, you already know how to install SDL and would
> resent any attempts I make to bundle it?"
>
> Is it reasonable to dump a copy of libSDL.so and libSDL_mixer.so into the
> same folder? I think that works?
>
> Is trying to build a statically linked Linux executable worth the effort?
>
> I think I will take a stab at the very simplest implementation of this
> (the don't bother with libraries approach), and we can refine it later.
>
> Also, once I get some feedback from The Wobbler and from Meatballsub about
> how their experiences with putting C.Kane and Ruin on Steam progress, I
> would like to think about a Distribute Menu option like "Export Steam
> Depot" or something along those lines
>
>
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