Re: [pygame] PyGame Runtime

["Cameron Blackwood" <korg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, long time reader, first time caller... (well ok, second time :)

James Paige writes:
  |
  | > On Tue, 8 May 2007, James Paige wrote:
  | > >
  | > > When packaging for Linux, you should NOT be trying to bundle in a copy
  | > > of python and pygame and all other dependencies. You should instead use
  | > > a packaging format which simply describes the packages/versions that it
  | > > depends on. The package manager handles the rest.

To james I say.....

Ive had nightmares with rpm's and even a couple of problems with
ebuilds. You download 26M of ogre/pyogre only to find you need to forward
your version of libfoo.rpm. Oh, but that breaks your appbar.rpm. Oh and I
need to upgrade my glibc.rpm. Again. :-/

Frankly, getting dependany stuff sorted for pyweek is a nightmare
(even under gentoo, gentoo often rolls their packages forward too
quickly so older, slower to update libraries have dependancy stuff
that isnt around in portage any more).

For linux, people seem to 'chase' the 100% latest version of some of
these libraries, which is ok for slowly changing ones, but it sucks
for ones that have a version a week.

Windows doesnt have the dependancy problem that linux has (or the
constant version increases) but unless you have a compiler
you're stuck with the packages that you can _find_, which arnt always
easily available. *cough* pygame-1.8 */cough* :)

Getting ogre and some of the bigger libraries compiled on linux is,
and Ill be nice here, not exactly easy. Oh and I work as a linux sysadmin.
Yes I could have sat there for hours and worked it out, but you know,
to tryout/run _one_ pyweek entry, it really wasnt worth it.

(And before you ask, this was on a gentoo system... it didnt complain
about dependancy errors, it just failed to build 1/2 way through.
Yay!)

  | On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 08:20:20AM +1000, Richard Jones wrote:
  | > 
  | > Without wanting to be too rude about it, I have to say that's an interest
  | ing 
  | > fantasy world you live in there :)
  | >
  | > 1. while I'd like to believe that we'll magically get packages for all th
  | e 
  | > games produced by PyWeek I know it's never going to happen.

To richard I say....

How about "if you build it, they will come"?

If someone _did_ gather and build a 100% stand alone 

  python + pygame + opengl + openal + ogre + etc 

'tree' for windows, mac and linux then I think you'd
find that a lot of people would start to use it in preference
to the current 'roll your own/install lots of packages' system.

Personally, I wouldnt make it a package at all.
If you just made it a just directory zip/tar of a 100% self
sustained python+everything (and a setup program to patch the paths and
finish the install) then anyone could use it, anywhere, on anything
and _know_ that stuff would work ok.

No dependancy hell, no more downloading libfoo-1.2.3 too. If you finish
with it, just 'nuke' the tree (no registry hell, no package tracking).
That would make creating 'game cd's very easy too.

You could make it kind of 'drag and drop' too....

/foo/bar/gamepython/
                    gamepython/
                               python <-- binary
                               libs/ <-- all the libs etc
                    games/
                    game_picker[.exe/py] <--- simple 'games chooser' app

Just drop/extract games into '..../gamepython/games' and you're away.
(You know where python is in relative to that directory so your game
can work it out the path easily, or maybe you can have a default
sh/bat file that walks back looking for gamepython/python in each
game's directory.)

You'd have a 'universal' python game environment. (Yes, you'd be
lagging the 'latest features' of most of the game libraries, but I
always hate having to grab _yesterdays_ version of libfoo anyway. Id
trade features for universal pretty well any day).

You may still have glibc problems for linux, but really, stuffing
round with ldpath/static binaries/including all of glibc (remember 100%
self sustained install) would probably get around that.

To me, that would be a pretty attractive draw.... win/os/mac... no
other installing... easy stand alone distribution/CD creation. Ah, Im
in lurrrrrve.

Im going to stop dreaming now... :)

cheers,
cam
:-)


--
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