[Freeciv-Dev] Re: request for --disable-sound

[Raimar Falke <rf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jun 11, 2002 at 03:09:19PM +0100, Ben Webb wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 11, 2002 at 01:20:13AM +0200, Davide Pagnin wrote:
> > On Wed, 2002-05-29 at 11:13, Raimar Falke wrote:
> > > I would prefer a solution where the checks for ESD and SDL are made
> > > more strict and so these options are removed on your systems.
> > 
> > A run-time test of both the libraries, could do the trick, for my
> > systems.
> 
>       I think this could be tricky, as if I understand your problem
> correctly, you're trying to run the civclient binary, which is
> dynamically linked to the necessary ESD and SDL libraries, on a machine
> which doesn't have those libraries. A simple run-time test isn't
> possible, because the failure occurs when the dynamic loader tries to
> pull in these libraries, and that's before your program starts, AFAIK.

The problem is that something (I'm no sure what is exactly checked,
probably the include files) indicates that ESD is installed at the
system but the library isn't found/don't exists.

>       One solution is to use plugins for the sound subsystem. That
> way, if a given plugin is linked to non-existent libraries, it will just
> fail to start up and can be disabled, rather than preventing the whole
> program from loading. 

> This is also useful when making binary distributions - I don't know
> what the current feeling is, but requiring everybody to have ESD and
> SDL_mixer installed before they can use Freeciv would be a bit
> annoying, particularly if they don't have a sound card!

People can always compile from source and I don't see a problem for
distributions:
$ ldd /usr/bin/*|grep libesd|wc
    162     648    8100

> (On the other hand, multiple binary distributions are inefficient.)
> Plugins would allow a main package to be distributed, plus additional
> packages for other sound systems - for example, XMMS does this with its
> xmms, xmms-esd, xmms-vorbis, etc. RPMs.

Seems like a lot of work for very little gain.

>       I'd be interested to hear what people have to say about Freeciv
> sound plugins. If you want to see code, I have a system which is very
> similar to Freeciv's in another project of mine at
> http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/dopewars/dopewars/src/sound.c
> The main drawback (from my point of view) is that to build the necessary
> dynamic libraries, you have to mess with libtool...

        Raimar

-- 
 email: rf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 Make a software that is foolproof, and only fools will want to use it.