Alien Arena 2011 Game Released

[curaga]

CMake's shaping up that way.

-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<foo>

Not hard... This isn't to say that CMake's the answer for things- but it seems that it's a better one than many. And I'll challenge you to cobble together a CMake set over an autotools one for a new project. I've tried to do autotools setups- and fix them when they're broken. CMake actually seemed easier for my circumstances.

I was implying that CMake's documentation sucks
It was rather hard for me to find those out when I built my first cmake-using package.

Contrast this with ./configure --help, which is very clear to a newbie in comparison.

Of course autotools has had a decade or two of refinement.


FWIW, the easiest new-project setup for me has been qmake.

That's familiarity. autotools is a baroque answer to a problem that's just simply less screwy than imake was. More to the point, autotools is really only Linux/POSIX centric. It doesn't do well outside of that- and sadly, you DO have to deal with Windows for some things... (We won't get into the fact that autotools is two kludges on top of ./configure that were done to compensate for ./configure and Makefile deficiencies...)

Do you mean building on Windows? I'd rather avoid doing that, and just cross-compile from my linux box. So far I've managed to avoid it, and things have worked fairly well.

[not.sure]

Builds for me as-is, but doesn't start. Craps out with some media files not found, probably some path variables not set. That could really use some improvement.

[dfblogic]

It's almost 2011, would you please stop using autotools?

(and other autotools related posts)

For a detailed defense for using autotools, see Autotools, by John Calcote. But, briefly, from the preface, page xix: The primary purpose of the Autotools is to make life simpler for the end user (i.e. not the programmer.) For Alien Arena, a major goal was to improve our Linux builds for distro package maintainers (who, in my book, are unsung heroes.) It is no big news, I have discovered, that no developers really like Autotools all that much. It would be great for GNU and the rest of the Open Source Community to adopt easier to use build tools. But, I am pretty sure, Alien Arena is not going to be a leader in that cause.

[yogi_berra]

a major goal was to improve our Linux builds for distro package maintainers (who, in my book, are unsung heroes.)

Package maintainers for deb and rpm can handle scons and cmake with very few problems. They usually know what they are doing.

It would be great for GNU and the rest of the Open Source Community to adopt easier to use build tools. But, I am pretty sure, Alien Arena is not going to be a leader in that cause.

Few non-gnu projects are using autotools, and for good reason. Who wants to learn five different archaic scripting languages that are poorly documented just to build something when one language works just fine?

[Irritant]

Well the difficulty of implementing AutoTools in Alien Arena is a moot point - the work is done already.

So far the majority of our end users have felt that it has made life a lot easier for them to get the game running, which was the ultimate goal.

This is kind of getting a bit off topic anyway.

[Svartalf]

I was implying that CMake's documentation sucks
It was rather hard for me to find those out when I built my first cmake-using package.

Contrast this with ./configure --help, which is very clear to a newbie in comparison.

Of course autotools has had a decade or two of refinement.

Heh... If it's had a decade or two... Then why is it so convoluted to set up and when it breaks, why is it so convoluted to fix (seriously...it is...)

Do you mean building on Windows? I'd rather avoid doing that, and just cross-compile from my linux box. So far I've managed to avoid it, and things have worked fairly well.

Considering that autotools doesn't help you there either...

[Svartalf]

Well the difficulty of implementing AutoTools in Alien Arena is a moot point - the work is done already.

So far the majority of our end users have felt that it has made life a lot easier for them to get the game running, which was the ultimate goal.

This is kind of getting a bit off topic anyway.

You're a regular...you know some of these discussions go off into left field...

[deanjo]

You're a regular...you know some of these discussions go off into left field...

Left field? That's a mild understatement.

[curaga]

It's the offtopic threads that are the most interesting usually. :P

[yogi_berra]

This is kind of getting a bit off topic anyway.

Being honest about Autotools is never off topic.

Merry Christmas.