1. Had trouble figuring out what to download right from the "get-go" on the Download page. Of course running Linux, I always want the source code so that I can compile it myself. Saw the source listed under development but wasn't sure if that was what I needed. Might want to add a "Download for Linux" tag or something to the paragraph explaining the source code. Especially since it is listed under all the other installers at the top of the page.
2. Got the source, now what!?! Went to the fourms to have a look around and found a linux how-to sticky at the top of the linux forum. "OK", I thought... "Should be easy from here on out".... Noticed right off the bat that i would need a half a dozen or so dependencies to build the source. Nothing out of the ordinary if one is familiar with Linux. It would have been nice if links were included in the post that points to the project page for each dependency but luckily (for me) I have Yast with SuSe so I was able to get what I needed quickly.
3. After getting all the dependencies installed I also then noticed that I needed ANOTHER file called the linux data file that is not even listed on the download page!! In fact, its only mention of existence is in this sticky. Wierd, but ok. Not only that, but the version number for the linux data file is 74b1 while the source is 74b3. Hmm.... Getting stranger...
4. I proceded to "scons" the thing and scons came back with a "Python 2.4 not found". Really... Last I checked I had Python 2.5 loaded and operational. Back to the forums.... Found that I wasn't the only person that has this problem. Apparently the makefile is hard coded for Python 2.4 only. So after going in and editing the makefile so that it will look for Python 2.5 I re-ran "scons configure" and then "scons" and the project finally built.
5. Here is where I really got confused and it had to do with that damn linux data file. The readme that comes in the data file seems to be totally different from the sticky instructions. First off, the sticky said to unzip the tarball inside the spring "game" directory and overwrite the files yet the readme from the linux data doesn't say anything like this. The readme says to create a ".springrc" file with a specific path to the game (or data, can't remember) while the sticky doesn't reflect that at all.
Basically I got stuck here and didn't know what to do. Do I overwrite? Where does the linux data go? How do I get spring to see the data? Do I really need that ".springrc" file? etc...
So that is where I gave up and did a "rm -rfd" on the entire directory...
I not writing this post to bash the developers. I have read some great things on this project and would have loved to be able to get this thing up and running. But the lack of documentation for the linux version has me wondering if that will ever be possible (for at least me). God knows, I'm not perfect and the small projects I have done with linux in the past are not perfect either. Especially since this is an open source project it will always be a work-in-progress. That is a great thing!! But I just thought I would pass on some (hopefully) meaningful information to make the linux port much more friendly to idiots like me...
The bottom line of my post is this: It needs better documentation for linux. Without it, the slightly confused (again, like me) have no hope of getting it work to work...
I didn't even know there were some in the ubuntu repositories
