If there’s anything I’ve proven to myself time and time again, is that I’m not good with Linux. Sure I can install it, use it, maybe play around with a bit if it’s got enough GUIs, but it all reeks of beginner. All I can do is pack an executable in a tarball when there’s a million people out there thet can make fancy packages and distributions and what-not.
So, I’m dropping my Linux testing and binary builds (I don’t think they ever worked anyways). Instead, I’m welcoming all the Linux enthusiasts to help maintain OpenXcom on their favorite platform of choice. This isn’t a serious commitment, just make sure to test it regularly and let us know of any issues, or even help distribute it by making builds, creating fancy packages or spreading it among your repositories. If it’s good I’ll even place your builds on the Downloads page and credit you.
This doesn’t apply to just Linux though, OpenXcom is a cross-platform project and I love to see it running on new platforms. If you’re good at porting to some esoteric platform or just optimizing for lighter devices, don’t be shy, share your experiences on the forum and help spread OpenXcom everywhere!
Update: There is now a new section on the forums to post and discuss your own builds, and I will try to inform you of upcoming stable releases there. I also welcome you to contribute to the Compiling section on the wiki with instructions for your particular platform/IDE/etc.
I can only led a hand regarding Slackware x64 packages… but if you need packages for this distro, you probably already know how to make one yourself 🙂
Otherwise, look me up in the forum
As a linux user this makes me a little sad but if it gives you more free time to work on the Geoscape side of the game i can live with that.
Besides OpenX works great in virtualBox 😉
I don’t think this is a problem.
Nobody will miss the binary builds.
If there is enough testing by users and you find a good way to accept patches or bug solutions without day-long bureaucracy and security-distrust paranoia linux users will not loose the motivation to report in.
It’s a shame to lose official builds but I understand it.
I can work on Ubuntu builds.
How would you like contributors to inform you about the packages?
And how do we get news about new releases? I usually get them when you post here but do you have another channel for that kind of announcement?
Well, it seems that Ubuntu’s SDL-mixer package has a stupid bug: the file “/usr/lib/pkgconfig/SDL_mixer.pc” is missing, which prevents you from compiling anything that depends on SDL-mixer.
I’m using Ubuntu 11.04, but 11.10 has exactly the same problem. The file has been added for 12.04 but I can’t believe no one hasn’t noticed this until now!
I’ve filed a bug report about this (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sdl-mixer1.2/+bug/928792) but I really doubt anyone will pay attention to it, which unfortunately is what usually happens in Ubuntu with this type of “minor” bug… :\
Meanwhile linux users can download the sources and create a own build to test and send bugs, i don’t see any problem. If somebody want to create packages would be better but it isn’t the end… I like your work very very much, it’s one of my top 3 games projects to follow (and i can play with it in my linux :D)
Following this thread, before you had here some pages with information to compiling (the steps and commands for linux are there) and it always worked for me without problems, but now you when you change all to the ufoapedia wiki, i can’t find it! Would be possible to add it, or type it or link it?
@kkmic: I have no idea how to make any sort of Linux packages, if it wasn’t obvious enough. 😉
@luke83: OpenXcom will still support Linux, I just won’t be the one trying it. 😛 Linux users can keep compiling it themselves as they always have.
@Nils: Time to accept patches depends purely on their size and the team’s availability to review them. GitHub makes this even easier since we can merge them in one-click.
@Raul: The forum is good for discussion, I have set up a section for fan-builds: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/board,9.0.html
Ubuntu packages can be a bit messy, the sdl_gfx package is woefully outdated and causes bugs on OpenXcom.
@Lukas: The Compiling section on the Wiki is available here: https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Compiling_(OpenXcom)
The old instructions were partially corrupted and outdated, so we had to scrap them. If anyone wants to write new instructions for Linux in the wiki, be my guest. The codebase supports CMake and Autotools now, so it shouldn’t require much more than a “git pull” and “make”.
If you want to create package distributions based on either RPM or deb, the CMake build system already have a good support for this.
You just need to set the BUILD_PACKAGE option and once built, cpack -G RPM or cpack -G DEB
Package dependencys can also be set. I have already filled the needed informations for Debian and Fedora.
@SupSuper: the “you” in my comment was not a reference to you directly. “you” was a generic term for the OpenXcom fan/user.
That translates to: If there is anyone that needs Slackware x64 packages, he’s obviously using this distro… and if you use Slackware, you can probably make your own packages 🙂 Look me up otherwise
But I’ll look into integrating Slackware package building into the cmake script. Maybe this way I’ll learn how to use cmake 😀 This will be (at least) a nice exercise for me.