Would it be possible to provide packages for the moste commonly used distros?
I use Ubuntu and without your statically linked version I wouldn't be able to start the game at all.
Compiling for myself is quite an issue - I was forced to recompile some python libs and was never sure if the new libs could break my system, so I am just not willing to do this myself.
My guess is: with this version of yours, it should be quite easy to provide some .deb or .rpm packages.
It should be no problem to take the tar.gz and build a deb out of it, containing the statically linked version. This then should work on ever debian-based distro. But - I do not have the time to figure that out for now.
I tried it out on Debian etch, works beautifully. Thanks! Is there any reason why this isn't the default installation method for Linux, considering that freeorion is too early in development for Distro support.
Tortanick wrote:I tried it out on Debian etch, works beautifully. Thanks!
Indeed, thanks kroddn.
Is there any reason why this isn't the default installation method for Linux, considering that freeorion is too early in development for Distro support.
There are reportedly compatibility problems between different distros that will prevent this version from running in some cases. See earlier in this thread for discussion.
It seems to work great for debian-like distros though, and there is a link on the FreeOrion download page on the wiki.
It's necessary to link against OpenGL dynamically to use correct implementation(nvidia, ati...). It won't cause problems on different distros because OpenGL API is standardized.
loonycyborg is right. With "statically linked" I meant "almost all libs statically linked". The main libs, which should be available on modern distributions, can be linked dynamically.
Now there is a Loki Installer which helps installing the game. Just run setup.sh inside the archive. The installer creates a system-wide symlink "freeorion" and menu-entries, if you wish to.