[Pkg-pascal-devel] Castle Game Engine build tool

[Michalis Kamburelis]

> In our case, note that we *do not* bundle normal Linux libraries
> there. We bundle the Windows precompiled libraries (and one
> precompiled Android library). The reason is simple: these libraries
> are quite crucial (e.g. libpng to read png files, OpenAL to play
> sound), and getting them on some platforms (Windows, Android) is
> cumbersome.

To clarify more:

The libraries we distribute (in compiled form) are all open-source,
and we don't make any modifications to them. We also don't intend to
freeze our support to some specific versions of them (CGE will always
support all common versions of libpng, freetype and so on). We only
distribute them in compiled form because that's just comfortable for
users. E.g. users can just execute "castle-engine package --os=android
--cpu=arm" and they get a working Android apk that plays sound (using
OpenAL for Android bundled inside).

It's all open-source and reproducible work, and could be rebuild by
anyone or even automated. But I don't think it's in Debian's
scope/interest to do it? I don't think you're interested in
maintaining Windows library versions within Debian:) These libraries
are useful only when packaging the game to Windows or Android. If you
want to use them on Linux, you will probably want also cross-compiler
stuff for Windows/Android, which is not provided in Debian anyway.
(Even getting Android SDK in Debian is a task in progress as far as I
know, https://wiki.debian.org/AndroidTools ).

However, our tar.gz (just like our zip) wants to be OS-agnostic, and
contains everything for all OSes.

So it seems to me that removing these libraries from Debian
distribution, on Debian side, would be simplest. Just remove the
mentioned dirs

  tools/build-tool/data/external_libraries/
  tools/build-tool/data/android/integrated-components/sound/

Removing them on my (CGE) side would mean that I prepare and upload a
special tar.gz that is really only for Debian usage...

Is that Ok?


Regards,
Michalis