Linux packager endorsement

[Alberto Salvia Novella 21]

As you probably know I have created a software that fully packages The Dark Mod for Linux. Without that software the game cannot be installed system wide.

The problem I'm facing is that that Arch Linux won't allow me to use it under their operating system because it's not an officially provided software.

So I was wondering if The Dark Mod community could endorse that software somehow. I guess that mentioning so in this thread would be enough, otherwise I could notice. Although I'm opened to further suggestions.

I can provide a digital signature that warrants that I can be held liable for that code.

Edited November 23, 2019 by Alberto Salvia Novella

[freyk 391]

could you tell me/us what the differences are between this package and those in the ubuntu/opensuse/freyk repo? 

[Alberto Salvia Novella 21]

Could you provide me a link to those packages?

[OrbWeaver 456]

I know nothing about the Arch Linux packaging policy, and I am not officially speaking on behalf of the team, but I would be astonished if any distribution would package that software as it currently stands. There is absolutely no indication of what the software does, why someone would want to download or use it, or how it should be used. No documentation, no README, nothing. I can't even tell from the repository who is supposed to be installing and running this software — e.g. is it aimed at people who want to create packages of the Dark Mod (to give to other people), or for end users who want to install the Dark Mod for themselves to play? Or is your Git repo just a skeleton for building an Arch package of the Dark Mod itself, and end users will not run your scripts themselves? I really have no idea.

The licensing situation is also very unclear, since your license file refers to GPL 3, but does not contain the GPL 3 license and also seems to impose its own requirements which are not compatible with the GPL (for example, the GPL does not require distributors to credit the author or indicate if changes were made).

[Alberto Salvia Novella 21]

What the software does is stated under its title: it builds a root tree adequate for packaging the game into Linux. You simply run the program, and that is done. There's nothing else to explain.

The documentation is under the "info" folder. There you can find a file called "usage rights.txt" with a link to the GPL. Those extra requirements you mention are there by mistake in the human readable summary, and can be fixed.

[OrbWeaver 456]

9 hours ago, Alberto Salvia Novella said:

What the software does is stated under its title: it builds a root tree adequate for packaging the game into Linux. You simply run the program, and that is done. There's nothing else to explain.

A single line of text under the title is not documentation, and will not be visible to anybody who installs a package of this software through their distribution. Even if you put that text into the package description, as a hypothetical end user I still have no idea what it means to "build a root tree adequate for packaging the game into Linux", or why I would want to do this. Maybe I'm just exceptionally stupid, but if I don't understand the purpose of the script, it's possible that the Arch developers don't either, which might be why they are rejecting the package.

(Looking at the contents of the script I can see that it is creating a directory structure under a directory called "build" which contains Dark Mod files in system-wide subdirectories locations like /usr/bin, but I don't think end users would normally be expected to read the source of a script to find out what it does after installing a package. Nor is it immediately obvious why an end user would want to run such a script on their own system — surely building this tree is something that should happen as the first step of building an RPM/DEB/AUR package, and should be included in the package build scripts, not installed onto the end user's system?).

What is expected to happen when an Arch user installs this package? Presumably they're just going to get a build.sh file installed into some system-wide location (maybe /usr/bin) which will then appear in their PATH. From the name build.sh it is not obvious what this tool does or what project it is associated with, but if I try to do the obvious and type "man build.sh" or "build.sh --help" neither of those commands are going to give any help (and the second one will presumably just start building a Dark Mod root tree in the current directory, which may not be what I want).

Again, I am not associated with Arch and have no idea of the exact reason they would reject the package, nor am I suggesting that the script is useless (in fact it is probably very useful for people who want to create DEB or RPM packages of the Dark Mod). I'm just giving some possible reasons why a distribution might not accept it. Essentially you're just giving them a random shell script and saying "Here, distribute this awesome script! There's no documentation or man page included, but if you want to know what it does, just look at Github or read the source!".

[Alberto Salvia Novella 21]

In their own words, the reason why they are rejecting the software is that it doesn't come from The Dark Mod project. And nothing different than that will make them change their mind.

Without this software the game cannot be installed system wide and work, since a system wide folder cannot have write permission for holding the saved games and campaigns.

For instance after posting this thread we had a huge fight about this, because the game cannot work without this software but they wanted it out nowadays. Then they decided to ship the game as it is, and the game is no longer able to save games or download campaigns.

[Alberto Salvia Novella 21]

Well probably there's nothing else you can do on that regard for the moment being. I have tried providing the game as an alternative version, lets see if it sticks.

By the way, compared with the official standalone, the software provides the following features. In case you are interested in them:

• Separated saved games and mission cache for each user, so they cannot delete each other's.
• Missions auto-cleanup. If you delete the mission saves from inside the game, and the mission isn't the current installed one, it will be removed automatically on next game launch. This is important as the game folder will be out of view for the user.
• Enhanced installation speed. As it uses the fastest mirror by default, and provides the package building method that minimizes recurrent copies.

[freyk 391]

those are great features to have.  (but your last feature is not playing nice to the mirror server owner) 

so, people doesnt accept your "changes" for the TDM installer package on Arch Linux. People did this also for same reasons for my changes for the  installer package for opensuse Linux (and the others for windows and mac. more info: see topic Graphical installers for TDM )

It would be nice that the TDM Team endorsed our installation packages a bit more,

so we can easily add them (and changes) to os repo's.
In the way the team did for the TDM installer for windows, on the downloadpage, moddb, etc.
Or others, like bikerdude did for my/our playonlinux-package.

Edited November 26, 2019 by freyk

[Alberto Salvia Novella 21]

 

[freyk 391]

has been suggested before. 

But you have to set the first steps yourself. I hope you/we can give this organization what they want, under a noncommercial-license and -price.
(we have seen this earlier, when bikerdude tried this with valve's steam.) 

Edited November 29, 2019 by freyk

[Alberto Salvia Novella 21]

One way or another there's always a way. Have a nice day