FYI I have improved the support for Spring: 1944 in SPADS installer: the installer is now able to download the latest test version of Spring: 1944 automatically (previously it was only able to download the stable version automatically). It is now also able to download all Spring: 1944 specific maps automatically.
Also, I have created an automatic SPADS installation template dedicated to Spring: 1944. This means one can add the "--auto Spring1944" parameter when launching the installer and it will automatically select all the appropriate options for a Spring: 1944 autohost, auto-downloading the correct engine version, the correct game version, all the Spring: 1944 specific maps etc. The only questions asked by the installer in this case are for the lobby credentials and the name of the autohost owner, which are necessarily specific to the SPADS instance being installed.
Finally, I have created a Dockerfile which automates the build of an image with a SPADS installation for Spring: 1944. This makes it possible to host Spring: 1944 games using Spring engine 105.0 even though the host system doesn't have the correct version of glibc. I have tested it on my minimal Oracle Linux 8 environment and it works perfectly.
If you are interested, here are the instructions to use this docker image on Oracle Linux 8 (only the first step requires sudo, other steps should be performed as a normal non-privileged user):
1)
Install podman (the default container engine for Oracle Linux)
2)
Create the SPADS installation directory on host system
This directory must be empty (it will be provisioned by the container using a bind mount).
3)
Build the image of SPADS for Spring: 1944
In the command below, "<spadsLobbyLogin>" must be replaced by the lobby login that will be used by the autohost (the corresponding account must exist on the lobby server), "<spadsLobbyPassword>" must be replaced by the password of the lobby account used by the autohost, and "<adminLobbyName>" must be replaced by the lobby login of the owner of the autohost, who will have privileged access on the autohost
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podman build --tag spads-spring1944 --userns host --volume $HOME/spads:/opt/spads --security-opt label=disable --build-arg lobbyLogin=<spadsLobbyLogin> --build-arg lobbyPassword=<spadsLobbyPassword> --build-arg owner=<adminLobbyName> http://planetspads.free.fr/spads/installer/auto/Spring1944/Dockerfile
4)
OPTIONAL: customize SPADS configuration
If needed, edit the files in $HOME/spads/etc
5)
Create and start a temporary container using the local image created previously
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podman run --rm -t --userns keep-id --volume $HOME/spads:/opt/spads --security-opt label=disable --network host spads-spring1944
When SPADS is stopped the container will be automatically removed. Only step 5 must be performed to start SPADS again (this command could be put inside a "start_spads" shell script or alias for example to facilitate use). All previous steps are only needed once during installation, to initialize the image.
With this method, all SPADS files are available locally in $HOME/spads exactly like a normal local SPADS installation. The only difference is the command used to start SPADS ("podman run ..." instead of "perl spads.pl etc/spads.conf")
Note: as for any SPADS installation, if the system is behind a router and/or firewall, the UDP port used by the engine (8452 by default) will have to be open and/or forwarded.
