Re: GFX under Linux

[Katie Lucas <katie@fysh.org>]

On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 07:16:34PM +0000, Adam D. Moss wrote:
> Katie Lucas wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 05, 2001 at 03:40:50PM +0600, Mark D'voo wrote:
> > > what was so hard about SDL??
> > 
> > The fact that while I download SDL occaisionally to see how it's
> > getting on, nothing ever seems to compile. Here i have a nice shiny
> > Redhat 7.2 system.
> 
> Well, that's depressing.  I'm using SDL in a cross-platform
> GL game partly for its general universality, now I wonder whether
> I chose the right API.  Thankfully (?) source won't generally
> be distributed so difficulty-to-compile doesn't matter much,
> but how difficult do people generally find it to be to run
> precompiled SDL apps?
> 
> Do Loki static-link all of their SDL-based binaries?

Speaking rather brutally, I would.

It's either that or you're into the realms of distributing the right
versions with the software (which removes any "media space saving"
argument) and then having to mess aorund installing the things on
14,000 variant versions of Linux, plus all the spotty-geeks who
hand-roll their own. And not clobbering later versions. Unless they
won't work with the application...

Or trusting that the said 14,000 variants plus the
spottily-hand-rolled versions already have the right versions
installed in the right places.

Hmm. Have to say, making my binary 4Mb bigger versus having it work
straight off on nine machines, four of which are in my office versus
supporting the installer for the rest of my days; I'd pick wasting
some space on the CD...

And here, suddenly, is another argument against developing for
Linux. It's as hard as developing for Windows and you have 1/10th the
potential customers...