Build process is a big entry barrier

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quartz
Space Krill
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Mar 03, 2006 10:19 pm

Build process is a big entry barrier

#1 Post by quartz »

Hi all,

I've been interested in the project (MOO was probably the game I've wasted most of my time until now...). My PC runs Linux (Ubuntu, Debian-based). I've found the build process to be incredibly hard to setup. Following the Debian instructions from "Harm" didn't help much. I've skimmed through the forum, and found phrases like "the developers don't have the time to keep the libraries up to date". If that's the case, shouldn't a binary version of the libraries be shipped with the code so the bugs are reproducible for all developers???

I understand one of the libraries is not open-source and couldn't be shipped in this form. Why was it selected? Seems like an obtuse solution, it must be a lot better than anything else available... I hope.

In the same rant, I'd like to say I could only unzip the data.zip file on windows - Linux complained about not having a central directory or something alike (sorry, I'm not on Linux at this time).

Thanks!

[]s Gus

Yoghurt
Programmer
Posts: 376
Joined: Sat Jun 28, 2003 8:17 pm
Location: Heidelberg, Germany

Re: Build process is a big entry barrier

#2 Post by Yoghurt »

quartz wrote:If that's the case, shouldn't a binary version of the libraries be shipped with the code so the bugs are reproducible for all developers???
I'm working (and worked) on this, but one thing that Windows does much better than Linux is keeping binary compability of libraries. A file compiled under Win98 can run under XP and vice versa.

Under Linux, this is simply not the case, the binaries I provided (and I tried hard to make them more compatible) didn't run on other distros.
I understand one of the libraries is not open-source and couldn't be shipped in this form. Why was it selected?
viewtopic.php?t=984

The sound system will be switched to OpenAL soon. (Or at least it will be an alternative). There is already untested code in SVN.
In the same rant, I'd like to say I could only unzip the data.zip file on windows - Linux complained about not having a central directory or something alike (sorry, I'm not on Linux at this time).
No problem here (debian, too)

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