Building Distributable Linux Binaries?

Grubby Games asks: "I make games for a living, and I want to ensure that my games will run on as many Linux distros as possible. However, since I distribute binary game executables, the programs often fail to run on certain distros because of missing dependencies, and so forth. So, how do the Slashdot Linux gurus handle this situation? I've heard a number of theories on the subject, but have yet to find one that results in 100% cross-distro compatibility. Is it even possible, short of distributing source code?"

Comments

Re:Staticly link EVERYTHING. It's the only way.

[Tamerlan]

As someone who is involved in supporting commerical closed-source applications on 3 Windozes, 5 Linuxes and 4 Solarises, I must confess - binary compatibility on Linux is too damn hard.

Solaris is way better than Linux in that regard, everything compiled on lower versions always works like a breeze on higher versions. Windows has a clear dividing line between retarded 95/98/ME and 2000/XP/2003/Vista, but we do not support 95/98/ME anyway, so binary compatibiity on Windows is wonderful, aside from some minor glitches with missing DLLs.

Now, binary compatibility on Linux is a total pain in the butt. Incompatibilities in glibc 2.2 vs 2.3, pthreads vs nptl, gcc C++ ABI is broken on every other gcc release, thread local storage, just to name a few hurdles.

Distributing statically linked executables is the most reliable way to go, if you want to support as many Linux variants as possible. However, there are few things to remember:
* If your application is security-critical, you link against static library and later security flaw is found in the library, OS security update leaves your application vulnerable.
* Never link statically with libdl. For example, application, statically linked on RH 7.3 witl libdl will misteriously crash on RH9
* Size of executables is big. Even worse if you have many executables using same libraries.

Oh, you said you are going to market games... Boy, you are better to build them for Windows anyway. Don't let me be misunderstood, I love Linux (except, for its binary (in)compatibility, of course), but it's just not the right market and business model for you anyway.

If you keep insisting on Linux, here is a hint. Most commercial vendors shipping products for Linux are oriented towards a limited number of distros, those used in enterprises. RedHat and SuSE that is. Mandriva? Ha-ha-ha. Oh, you say, Ubuntu and Debian are popular? Ouch, not among our cutomers.