libsdl-1.2 package has unnecessary variants
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| libsdl1.2 (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Wishlist
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
Doing an "apt-cache search libsdl" shows these packages:
libsdl1.2debian
libsdl1.
libsdl1.
libsdl1.
libsdl1.
libsdl1.
libsdl1.
...all of which are the same library, providing the same API to applications, except each is built with different audio backends (ALSA, Esound, /dev/dsp, etc).
We've spent a lot of time in the last few versions of SDL cleaning it up so that it can use these various backends without explicitly linking to them. The latest SDL release, 1.2.12, can be built as a binary that supplies any GNU/Linux audio or video target without explicitly linking to anything by glibc.
Things like xlib, alsalib, etc, will be dlopen()'d at runtime, and if they aren't available, SDL will try other avenues until it finds the optimal available path.
The end result is that you no longer need a separate SDL package for each target, as one build will fit all scenarios, and SDL will also be more robust against uncommon scenarios, like a user attempting to run software on the framebuffer device when there's no X server. This also allows SDL to gracefully handle things that may not be available at the moment on a given system, and it also allows a more flexible library without having ever-increasing complexity in the package system (for example, 1.2.12 added PulseAudio support, but it wouldn't necessarily need yet-another libsdl1.2 package).
SDL builds like this by default in 1.2.12, if you build it with gcc 4.x, and the configure script sees the dev packages for various backend targets (so it will compile against, say, the alsalib headers, but it won't link against the alsalib libraries until it tries to dlopen() them at runtime, doing the right thing if they aren't found then).
Is it possible to get these all merged into one, unified package that is built with all the audio/video backends?
Thanks,
--ryan.
| Jonathan Rogers (jonner) wrote | #1 |
| Brice Terzaghi (terzag) wrote | #2 |
| Changed in libsdl1.2: | |
| importance: | Undecided → Wishlist |
| Felix Geyer (debfx) wrote | #3 |
| Changed in libsdl1.2 (Ubuntu): | |
| status: | New → Fix Released |
I'm not positive, but it looks like libsdl1.2debian-all already is the unified package you describe. I only found this page because I'm running Hardy and trying to get everything to work well with PulseAudio, including SDL apps. The libsdl1.
So, I agree wholeheartedly with your proposal. It looks like the specialized packages are not only unnecessary, but harmful. Probably, simply eliminating them and setting SDL_AUDIODRIVER to the desired driver in the global environment somewhere would be far better.