What to use in packaging

[Josef Spillner]

El Viernes, 20. Enero 2006 15:06, Reinhard Tartler escribió:
> I think Alexander was talking about the svn package layout, rather than
> providing volatile data like new levels for games.

Yes sorry, I partially misread this (the SVN part).

Nevertheless the issue with per-user installations is that sometimes, for 
larger deployments (like in schools), people like to pre-install packages and 
later on users might want to download additional levels (such as those not 
yet available of the time of packaging).

As soon as a game wishes to use these facilities, two preparation steps have 
to be taken into account:
- game should transparently read from ~/.game in addition 
to /usr/share/games/game (unfortunately such layers are not supported on a 
low level with every OS... the Hurd does ;)
- the packages should install distribution independent meta data, in the same 
format the new (dynamic) data is shipping with

[Get Hot New Levels]
> Where can I look at the code?

http://ghns.freedesktop.org/

In addition to the client implementations listed there, I once wrote one for 
SDL in C (for Widelands), which however was then not used.
A dedicated server for such updates is available (sponsored by OSL).
I've been in the middle of setting it up when the exams hit me.
If needed, it can operate 24/7 right now, although I plan to implement the 
multi-site funcionality and a better web frontend until about March.

What is important to increase the number of offerings is to make it easy for 
people to share their creations (i.e. the upload part). I wouldn't care much 
about the download - on kde-look.org, people download hundreds of wallpapers 
using GHNS every day - but only very few people care about uploads, and this 
is what I'm trying to fix, providing better tools.

Checkout the Kamikaze game (ITP pending for many months, sorry) for integrated 
upload and download of levels. But I think having a separate application will 
also serve the purpose just fine and leads to less work in the beginning.

Josef