Spring RTS Engine

Hello,

I'm an IT pro, but only on windows systems. I follow linux for my personnal interest since many years. XP is not more suitable for my personnal needs, notably playing BA... So I'm planning to switch asap to linux, and Mageia seems to me the beter choice. I want to begin with BA, but I'd like to switch my pro environnement (mainly Eclipse) too, as soon as I control Mageia enough.

I open this topic so questions and answers about packaging Spring for Mageia will be centralized here for further use by me or others. I'm gonna search and gather infos and trace it here. I will eventually find everything I need, but you can spare me a lot of time and energy, if no metal.

Here is where I am now : to have Spring usable for my OS, I must find what is called "packager", "owner", or "bug owner" : a guy wich will, when he wants, push on the buttons needed (or type the commands in a console, more probably) to make Spring available. I found him, but he seems quiet buzzy, I can understand Spring is not a big concern, he has other buttons to push.

So I intent to become the packager for Spring for Mageia, so help me InterWeb. If the previous one could send me the buttons, it would be great (I'm sure I'm skilled enough to manage possible problems). If someone knows how to make this bloody buttons, or has an URL with an A4 page listing the receipt, i'll make a pleasure to make Spring constantly available to Mageia users.

Amen.

This may be relevant to your interests.
http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=28600

Well done, following the link you give ("just download the "minimal-portable", unpack and double click `spring`") that gave me that page : http://springrts.com/dl/buildbot/default/develop/ where I find a file named "LATEST", containing "{develop}91.0.1-505-ga024ac6".

So I go to http://springrts.com/dl/buildbot/defaul ... -ga024ac6/ , where I find a file named "spring_{develop}91.0.1-505-ga024ac6_minimal-portable-linux-static.7z" and download it. Great !

Let's unpack it. Ark seems to be associated with 7z files, so I started it. It's still opening the archive 5 minutes later, so either my Ark doesn't read 7z files, or this 7z file is corrupted. Lets try another, say the 0.89, which I know as been packaged, as it's the one I have.

--> dl http://springrts.com/dl/buildbot/defaul ... ortable.7z --> ark freezes again, so either Ark is bugged for Mageia 3 x86.64, or my Ark is jammed. I'll see that later.

Ok, just had to install p7zip package, now Ark works fine, I suppose p7zip should be there by default, but it's ok. Achive open, contains : a bunch of files looking exactly like files for windows, with .dll, .exe...

the current way to install spring on linux is the following:
1. compile it from source
2. create a distribution-specific package
3. install that package
If you are new to linux 1) and 2) may be too hard for you, so I suggest you either switch your distribution or wait for linux static to become common spread.

I'm used to compile sources and deploy applications... I suppose I must install gcc and utilities, grab the sources, compile using some makefile, and then follow the rules to pack, I suppose programs do that. Nothing that new...? Something technical ?

What's the problem ? Anyway i'll do that is there is no other way and nobody does it faster than me. I'm not sure somebody will, see http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=28600

Well then, the instructions can be seen here: http://springrts.com/wiki/Build_from_source
I've never heard of Mageia 3 before, so I can't help you with packaging, you should probably look on your distros wiki pages.

PS: I suggest you use the official tarbals so you have a stable version that works online: http://springrts.com/wiki/Download#Late ... e_Snapshot

Thank you very much :).

For Mageia 3 : i think since many months that Mageia is the distro I want. I tried then to play BA from Mageia 2, which is the current, stable version. But the springlobby can run only on Mageia 3, which is an "alpha 3" version, so I switched to it.

What problems are you having with springlobby? error logs please
Also, springlobby isn't the only lobby for spring. Of the prominent ones there's also NOTALobby that works on linux.

I have no problem with springlobby, works great, but asks for Spring 0.91 to play online... Do you have some linux working binaries of 0.91 or can you produce it ?

there are no cross-distro linux binaries that can be used for online play atm
you have to either compile it yourself or use a distro package which you claim mageia doesn't have
the cross-distro linux binaries (static compiled spring) will come starting from next version iirc

Ok, so let's access this Git repository... I have to install Git, of course, and would like a GUI for it, as I don't like to type DOS-like commands in a DOS-like console. Let's go for gitg, a "GTK+ graphical interface"... Mmmh really basic thing... I guess I will have to type commands, like back in the '80s. I really can't understand why people like that...?

So let's go :

$ git init
$ git clone -b master git://github.com/spring/spring.git

Great, I have now a spring repertory with the sources... Now I want to compile so obviously I need a compiler... I guess gcc-c++ will do the job, so I install it. Let's see... There is a cmake commands file, so I'll need cmake too... Trying to get a GUI once again... Seems ok. No time now i'll see that later.

JoeChip wrote:Ok, so let's access this Git repository...

True

JoeChip wrote:Ok, so let's access this Git repository...

gajop wrote: PS: I suggest you use the official tarbals so you have a stable version that works online: http://springrts.com/wiki/Download#Late ... e_Snapshot

The reason I told you to use tarballs instead of git is so you have a version compatible for online play, git won't give you that (you need the same version as other players, and git gives you the latest development one). Also, git will often give you a version which may be unstable (since it's a dev version).

JoeChip wrote: I really can't understand why people like that...?

CLI is powerful, consistent, less buggy and doesn't change every now and then. If you don't like it, you can always use a GUI, just don't expect projects to have a tutorial for it then.

I don't need tutorials. Just GUIs. Any sequence of command lines can be sent by a GUI... Less prone to typing errors... No need of a brain to remember text lines... I used command lines for more than 10 years, was happy when GUIs...

But ok, I got the "tarball" and changed sources, now i'm progressiong by pressing the button "generate" to get the errors, then go in mageia's software manager to search-and-click and install packages that have names asked and/or light google support... We'll see if I get stucked.

"doesn't change every now and then." ...... Sure .........

Generating done.

I guess that means I succeeded in a first compilation. I get warnings, part of it talking about java not installed so some skirmish AI won't build, i'll see later if needed, but also that :

Could NOT find OpenMP (missing: OpenMP_C_FLAGS OpenMP_CXX_FLAGS)
using mtune=generic (unsure if it will sync in online gaming)

OpenMP is actually present in the local packages, so I don't understand the question + even the guy in the makefile doesn't know if it will sync so why not try ?

WARNING: you are using the obsolete 'GLU' package, please use 'OpenGL' instead

Is it a problem ?

WARNING: you are using the obsolete 'GLU' package, please use 'OpenGL' instead
Is it a problem ?

no.
did you do a "git checkout 91.0" ? if not you'll get an version that is incompatible to online gaming... if cmake completed without error then you can run "make" and it should compile fine...

In the source directory of Spring, there is a file named "VERSION", containing "91.0", so I suppose that's ok...?

if cmake completed without error then you can run "make" and it should compile fine...

Uh, i thought that was done :) Ok, I open a console in the right place and type "make", it's working...

JoeChip wrote:In the source directory of Spring, there is a file named "VERSION", containing "91.0", so I suppose that's ok...?

yep, should be fine...

Compilation stops at 13% :

In file included from /home/utilisateur/spring_91.0/AI/Skirmish/E323AI/CE323AI.cpp:22:0:
/home/utilisateur/spring_91.0/AI/Skirmish/E323AI/CScopedTimer.h: In static member function ‘static unsigned int CScopedTimer::GetEngineRuntimeMSec()’:
/home/utilisateur/spring_91.0/AI/Skirmish/E323AI/CScopedTimer.h:39:31: erreur: expected unqualified-id before numeric constant
make[2]: *** [AI/Skirmish/E323AI/CMakeFiles/E323AI.dir/CE323AI.cpp.o] Erreur 1
make[1]: *** [AI/Skirmish/E323AI/CMakeFiles/E323AI.dir/all] Erreur 2
make: *** [all] Erreur 2

Stucked.