Distributing applications

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CoderLaureate(Posted 2010) [#1]
Ok, I just went through apt-get hell getting BMax working on my Xubuntu box. But it's working...

What files do I need to package up (along with my executable) when it comes to distributing my game to other linux users?


markcw(Posted 2010) [#2]
Technically, nothing. Everything is supposed to be installed already unless you have any custom libs.


dawlane(Posted 2010) [#3]
As markcw says nothing. But it is always helpful to list your programs dependencies. You can use the ldd command to find out what these are but as there are so many flavors of linux, it's hard to say what library belongs to what package.


Htbaa(Posted 2010) [#4]
A tarball is enough. But you could also create a debian package, or rpm file.


Brucey(Posted 2010) [#5]
Yep. deb packages work well, since they specify other requirements, although they are a pain to configure... (that's an understatement)


nawi(Posted 2010) [#6]
Shouldn't the program include some kind of configure script which checks whether the required libs are installed?


Jim Teeuwen(Posted 2010) [#7]
The packages are meant to take care of that for you. It's basically the whole point of packages and package managers.


nawi(Posted 2010) [#8]
Yes I know, but different distributions have different package managers. I for one won't install a package manager which can handle .deb for example, so I need those configure scripts.


Winni(Posted 2010) [#9]
Yes I know, but different distributions have different package managers.


Which is one of the many big problems with Linux. Too much choice actually harms the platform instead of promoting it. In BSD land, these things are much easier because they are consolidated. But the Linux crowd just loves to re-invent the wheel.


nawi(Posted 2010) [#10]

Which is one of the many big problems with Linux.

Nope, software should be free, and then it's up to distribution developers to manage the packages.