Gargoyle package for Fedora

[Carlo]

I've packaged Gargoyle for Fedora. It won't make it into the official Fedora repository since it needs the smpeg shared library, which lives in RPM Fusion, the unofficial community repository for Fedora. I've requested my package to be reviewed by them, but so far have not received a response.

https://bugzilla.rpmfusion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1638

If anyone wants to try this out and maybe add a comment on whether it works that would be cool. (Note that I've posted the SRPM which is the source package, not the binary, so you still have to compile it.)

Before this package even has a chance of getting accepted into RPM Fusion though, I need a Fedora "package sponsor" to "sponsor" me and then someone to review the package. If anyone on this list is involved with Fedora or RPM Fusion and would like to help me out that would be fantastic.

Carlo

[Ben Cressey]

Carlo,

Great, thanks for making this package.

I've thought about making the smpeg dependency a compile time conditional. I encountered the same issue two weeks ago when I was testing the date / time support on Fedora.

It's used for MP3 support, which is an unofficial extension of the blorb spec governing embedded resources. As such it should be OK to make it optional.

Actually, if you are using the official SDL_sound and SDL_mixer packages, you can probably just remove smpeg from the list of dependencies in Jamrules. I don't think it's used by anything apart from those libraries, and obviously they wouldn't have been built with support for it.

Regards,

Ben

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "garglk-dev" group.
To post to this group, send email to gargl...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to garglk-dev+...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/garglk-dev?hl=en.

[Carlo]

You're absolutely right, Ben. SDL_sound can optionally use smpeg, but
on Fedora is configured not to, so even when linking against smpeg, it
cannot actually be used. So I've removed -lsmpeg and it works fine.
I've tested with Glulx/Blorb demo game _Sensory Jam_ (http://
www.wurb.com/if/game/985) which uses non-MP3 sounds and they play
fine.

So I've withdrawn my RPM Fusion review request and submitted it to the
official Fedora repository instead.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=682544

Carlo

On Mar 5, 7:38 pm, Ben Cressey <bcres...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Carlo,
>
> Great, thanks for making this package.
>
> I've thought about making the smpeg dependency a compile time conditional. I
> encountered the same issue two weeks ago when I was testing the date / time
> support on Fedora.
>
> It's used for MP3 support, which is an unofficial extension of the blorb
> spec governing embedded resources. As such it should be OK to make it
> optional.
>
> Actually, if you are using the official SDL_sound and SDL_mixer packages,
> you can probably just remove smpeg from the list of dependencies in

> Jamrules<http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/Jamrules#79>.

> I don't think it's used by anything apart from those libraries, and
> obviously they wouldn't have been built with support for it.
>
> Regards,
> Ben
>

[Carlo]

I'm still going through the slow process of getting this into Fedora. The issue the reviewers are now focusing on is a quite fundamental one: the fact that Gargoyle bundles other interpreters, as opposed to requiring them as dependencies. See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=682544#c10 for the arguments.

Obviously this is not subject to change - I realise that most or all of the bundles interpreters offer no interface that Gargoyle could hook into, and that changing that would be an enormous effort.

I just thought you should be aware of this objection, Ben. Hopefully I can get it into Fedora eventually anyway. But perhaps it would help if you as the author could offer some succinct comment explaining the issue, perhaps even right on the bugzilla page: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=682544

Or perhaps someone else has experience with this particular objection - has it been raised when packaging Gargoyle for other Linux distributions?

Carlo

[Ben Cressey]

Hi Carlo,

It might be possible to pull in the interpreters as dependent packages, however most of them are not actively maintained and no package exists.

Even where an upstream version exists, building them for Gargoyle is akin to building them for a different UI toolkit. I don't know what Fedora's policy is on maintaining separate packages linked to Qt versus Gtk, but it seems reasonable to me that the requisite changes to the source would be treated as a fork rather than pushed upstream.

Gargoyle's Glk implementation is an alternative both to other Glk implementations and native UI toolkits (Gtk/Qt). Under Linux it is the de facto standard for Glk since it is the only one with multimedia support that is actively maintained. But that just means that an IF interpreter built for Linux will target the native UI toolkit instead, to avoid being locked into Gargoyle.

If the objection is that Frotz exists as a Fedora package, I should mention that Gargoyle bundles GlkFrotz which is now an independent fork. The version packaged for Fedora appears to be much older and probably lacks support for Unicode and the Z-Machine Standard 1.1.

Regards,

Ben

Carlo

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "garglk-dev" group.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/garglk-dev/-/ab8L1aR3wKoJ.