Well, the Loki Installer stuff (of which Makeself is a small part) does not have a Windows version, at least just not yet... Though the latest version is portable to most Unix systems, including OSX.
For the exact purpose you mention (compliance with the terms of the LGPL license), Loki started to release both static patches (on which technical support was available), and dynamic patches - dynamically linked binaries against all the LGPL libraries like SDL, OpenAL, glibc, etc...
Of course those were unsupported because it's just goddamn impossible to try to support the zillions of possible combinations.
Call it a trade-off if you wish, but Loki was doing their best to comply with the GNU licenses, while still trying to make everybody's life easier on the support side of things...
All the installation / uninstallation infrastructure from Loki always was open-source (GPL). You can still grab all the source code from their CVS repository: http://cvs.lokigames.com/.
I'm planning to continue supporting the Loki installer, so it probably won't stay a dead project.
Loki Setup is doing much of what people are describing here, although it's not very good yet at dealing with all packaging systems.
Setup is GPL, features an easy-to-use GTK+ UI, relies on XML files to describe the packages (and also the UI via libglade), generates uninstall scripts, handles RPM files, pre and post install scripts, etc... I also happen to be its co-author;-)
Most Loki products use it in conjunction with Makeself, which is included in setup, and enables programmers to make self-extractible program archives.
The AI bug as well as many other game-related bugs have been fixed in the forthcoming 1.3 patch for Heroes that should be released in a few days (it's almost ready internally, now in QA).
No. We currently support RPM archives as part of the archives that the installer can decompress. If RPM is available, then it will be installed the right way. If it is not, then the RPM will be installed anyway: running post and pre-install scripts and extracting the files. This is all built in the tool.
We can't limit ourselves to any package format, since we need to support all Linux installations. So whatever archives types we support we have to make sure that they can be installed on whatever Linux distro the installer can be run on.
The main purpose of this installer is to work nicely on all existing Linux distribution. However for now it only install the files themselves and keep track of them for the uninstall script (although RPM files can be installed through RPM). It currently supports tar and cpio archives, gzipped or not.
This is good for us since RPMs and the like are not always the best solution for games (when sometimes some data files have to stay on the game CD, etc).
However we welcome any contribution, if somebody wants to hack in.deb support;-)
It does - it keeps track of all the files and directories that were created during the install and generates a small "uninstall" shell script that will remove them all on demand.
The full version of Myth II has a "CD only" option for the installation that actually only installs the binaries on the hard drive (less than 10 MB) and plays the rest of the game straight from the CD...
I am one of the programmers working on the Myth II port here at Loki, so I can tell you the game is pretty much fully playable right now. We have it working in a X11 window and full 3D acceleration using Glide, all the sound and I hope to get the multiplayer support to work by the end of the week.
It was already cross-platform so it was quite easy to get it to compile and run on Linux. That's why we're already able to play the game after only about 3 weeks of work.;-)
Things just need to settle down.
on
Gaming on Linux
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· Score: 1
As far as I know, Loki is using SDL to port Civ: CTP on Linux. However I think they plan to use some SciTech technologies, especially their Nucleus driver technology that will eventually provide full 2D and 3D accelerated drivers on Linux. Companies like Loki will probably want to license that...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the Loki Installer stuff (of which Makeself is a small part) does not have a Windows version, at least just not yet... Though the latest version is portable to most Unix systems, including OSX.
For the exact purpose you mention (compliance with the terms of the LGPL license), Loki started to release both static patches (on which technical support was available), and dynamic patches - dynamically linked binaries against all the LGPL libraries like SDL, OpenAL, glibc, etc...
Of course those were unsupported because it's just goddamn impossible to try to support the zillions of possible combinations.
Call it a trade-off if you wish, but Loki was doing their best to comply with the GNU licenses, while still trying to make everybody's life easier on the support side of things...
All the installation / uninstallation infrastructure from Loki always was open-source (GPL). You can still grab all the source code from their CVS repository: http://cvs.lokigames.com/.
I'm planning to continue supporting the Loki installer, so it probably won't stay a dead project.
Loki Setup is doing much of what people are describing here, although it's not very good yet at dealing with all packaging systems.
;-)
Setup is GPL, features an easy-to-use GTK+ UI, relies on XML files to describe the packages (and also the UI via libglade), generates uninstall scripts, handles RPM files, pre and post install scripts, etc... I also happen to be its co-author
Most Loki products use it in conjunction with Makeself, which is included in setup, and enables programmers to make self-extractible program archives.
Stéphane Peter
The AI bug as well as many other game-related bugs have been fixed in the forthcoming 1.3 patch for Heroes that should be released in a few days (it's almost ready internally, now in QA).
:-)
Hang on
Stéphane Peter
Is there a way to do this from the RPM library (librpm) ?
Stéphane Peter
No. We currently support RPM archives as part of the archives that the installer can decompress. If RPM is available, then it will be installed the right way. If it is not, then the RPM will be installed anyway: running post and pre-install scripts and extracting the files. This is all built in the tool.
We can't limit ourselves to any package format, since we need to support all Linux installations. So whatever archives types we support we have to make sure that they can be installed on whatever Linux distro the installer can be run on.
Stéphane Peter
The main purpose of this installer is to work nicely on all existing Linux distribution. However for now it only install the files themselves and keep track of them for the uninstall script (although RPM files can be installed through RPM).
.deb support ;-)
It currently supports tar and cpio archives, gzipped or not.
This is good for us since RPMs and the like are not always the best solution for games (when sometimes some data files have to stay on the game CD, etc).
However we welcome any contribution, if somebody wants to hack in
Stéphane Peter
It actually does use RPM if it is available, but only to install RPM archives that may be part of the software to install.
I yet have to find a good way to arbitrarily add new entries in the RPM databases for files installed manually. Dunno about Debian though.
Stéphane Peter
It does - it keeps track of all the files and directories that were created during the install and generates a small "uninstall" shell script that will remove them all on demand.
Stéphane Peter
It will be used for all the next Loki products that will be released, i.e. Railroad Tycoon II, Eric's Ultimate Solitaire, Heretic II, etc...
Stéphane Peter
The full version of Myth II has a "CD only" option for the installation that actually only installs the binaries on the hard drive (less than 10 MB) and plays the rest of the game straight from the CD ...
I am one of the programmers working on the Myth II port here at Loki, so I can tell you the game is pretty much fully playable right now. We have it working in a X11 window and full 3D acceleration using Glide, all the sound and I hope to get the multiplayer support to work by the end of the week.
;-)
It was already cross-platform so it was quite easy to get it to compile and run on Linux. That's why we're already able to play the game after only about 3 weeks of work.
As far as I know, Loki is using SDL to port Civ: CTP on Linux. However I think they plan to use some SciTech technologies, especially their Nucleus driver technology that will eventually provide full 2D and 3D accelerated drivers on Linux. Companies like Loki will probably want to license that...