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I Feel Like Ranting ... About Linux-style Software Installation

Gildoran

By Gildoran
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Gildoran

Gildoran

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Posted

Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that linux is open source, I enjoy makefiles and g++, and I intend to avoid Vista like the plague, but I've been trying to learn to use mingw, SDL and SCons over the past week, and I feel like strangling the programmers!

 

The thing that's been driving me bonkers is that they either don't have step-by-step installation instructions, or NONE OF THE DOCUMENTATION WORKS!

 

The minGW download page talks about how in 2001 they started bundling a "MinGW distribution" to make installation easy for newbies. Of course, they don't make "MinGW distribution" a link, because that would be too easy. So I search the download page for "MinGW distribution", but none of the links in their download table are called "MinGW distribution". So I look for a bundled mingw (not msys) exe in the "current" group, to no avail. If you're making a bundled installer for newbies, perhaps you should link to it from your download page. I finally found it by searching through their Source-forge page. Fortunately, MSYS was a breeze to find and install.

 

So after successfully compiling some basic minGW programs just to test that my installation was working, I decided I'd like to install SDL so I could get some practice with openGL... unfortunately, their instructions for installing SDL for use with minGW are generally incomplete and wrong. I first downloaded the mingw SDL developer runtime tar file. The README files didn't really cover how to install it, so read the INSTALL file, which says to run ./configure... only there's no configure file in the same directory as the INSTALL file. So I go look for various instructions on the web. One suggests compiling the source code; this works much better, since the source-code zip actually contains a ./configure file. Likewise, it makes just fine. Unfortunately the instructions I've found on the web don't describe what to do after that, or if they do, they reference non-existant files. (for example, one wanted me to copy /usr/local/lib/sdl.dll, which actually turned out to be in /usr/local/bin/sdl.dll - before that, I was thinking they must have been talking about /usr/local/lib/libsdl.dll.a, which obviously didn't work)

 

After much struggling and some help from #SDL on IRC, I finally get a program to compile and link. It doesn't seem to work, since it doesn't produce any output, but at least (I think) I managed to link to the damned SDL libraries, no thanks to any of their documentation.

 

So then I've been hearing about SCons, and after reading through their documentation (it's pretty nice actually), I think it sounds like a cool replacement for make, and I'd like to try it out to compile the mingw program that worked. So I download and install it, which is a breeze, but it doesn't open up any readme on how to actually run scons... so rereading the documentation, it suggests that to run it, I just type "scons" in the cmd console and it'll read the SConstruct file. So I try typing "scons" in both MSYS and cmd, but in both cases, the command seems to be unknown. And the documentation doesn't describe how to install the command. I would have thought that the installer would do whatever the documentation doesn't tell you how to install.

 

Does no open-source software actually do what the documentation says it will?! :angry:

 

(ok, so some works great, such as GIMP or Python, which I love, but these last few packages have been driving me nuts)

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thelvyn

thelvyn

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In my experience a lot of these problems stem from different paths etc...

Unfortunately they all like to put things in different places. Red-hat, Ubuntu Mandriva etc. All do things differently which can make installing things an absolute bitch on occasion.

 

Providing you can get past the linux version of lib hell just to make the program.(Like DLL hell used to be and sometimes still is)

Installing a lot of software under linux can be an exorcise in frustration unfortunately.

 

It is much better then it used to be though. Always improving but as long as all the different Linux vendors do things so differently there are going to be problems.

 

I have not used either SDL or SCONS so I do not know the answer to your issue hopefully you will figure it out with some perseverance.

I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk!

Oops bad sectors damn floppy's!

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Crispy

Crispy

Posted
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Trying to use the Linux-style build environment on Windows is always a pain. It tends to work a bit better in Linux.

 

I've given up bothering with MingW directly. I just download Dev-C++, chuck all the source files in a new project and hit Build. It generally works.

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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sparhawk

sparhawk

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Never tried MingW so far, but on Linux the build process has been working for years now. And with sysetms like apt-get or emerge it's a breeze. I can imagine that it might be worse on Windows though. And documentation, well it's a moving target. ;)

Gerhard

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thelvyn

thelvyn

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I used to run redhat, then it was mandrake(Now its called mandriva), I tried gentoo but its a major hassle to get it up and running. I just dont have that much time to spend installing. Now I run Ubuntu also.

I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk!

Oops bad sectors damn floppy's!

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thelvyn

thelvyn

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Seems to me you have a bad install as I have no driver issues with Ubuntu, at least with my desktop machines. my laptop's wireless I had issues with.

 

Did you try formatting and doing a fresh install ?

I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk!

Oops bad sectors damn floppy's!

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thelvyn

thelvyn

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I have 2 ati, 2 nvidia, and two integrated and it installed and worked fine on all of them from base install.

I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk!

Oops bad sectors damn floppy's!

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Crispy

Crispy

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Wow, you must get some pretty good framerates with that setup. :laugh:

Nah... crappy integrated cards would pull the rest down with them. :P

 

(Yes, I have a vendetta against integrated cards. As a gamedev, they make life hell.)

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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