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chickadee bundle
Distributing games is difficult. While Chickadee games are free
software, it would be far too burdensome on the player to ask them to
compile a game from source in order to try it out. Many potential
players will simply not even try. Players expect to be able to
download a compressed archive, extract it, and play. If there are any
more steps than that then the chances of the game being played drop
dramatically. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. The
chickadee bundle
tool creates redistributable binary bundles
by combining the game code and assets with shared libraries and
executables from the host operating system.
Bundling is currently only supported on Linux. In the future, it may be possible to bundle on MacOS. Patches very much welcome for that.
It should be noted that bundling is a problematic way to distribute software. All of the libraries that the bundled application includes are separated from the distribution that was so carefully making sure that they stay up-to-date with regard to security patches. The bundled libraries are frozen in time, vulnerabilities and all. Unfortunately, the release model used by the most popular distributions, while wonderful for stable, mature software, does not fit the needs of game distribution at all. So, we compromise, knowing that most games are only played for only a short amount of time before being disposed. Perhaps, in time, the Linux world will shift to using more robust package management solutions such as GNU Guix which support long-term maintenance of stable software as well as the “fire and forget” nature of game releases. And maybe a game made with Chickadee will become so popular that major distributions decide to package it, but let’s get back to reality.
To get started with bundling, simply add a bundle.scm file to the root of the project directory. It could look something like this:
'((asset-directories . ("images" "models")) (bundle-name . "the-legend-of-emacs-1.0") (code . "the-legend-of-emacs.scm") (launcher-name . "the-legend-of-emacs"))
To create the bundle, simply run chickadee bundle
. Upon
success, the file the-legend-of-emacs-1.0.tar.gz would be
created in the current directory.
To maximize the chances that the bundle will work on someone else’s computer, it’s best to build on the oldest supported Linux distribution available. As of this writing, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is a good choice.
In addition to including system libraries and executables,
chickadee bundle
also includes the compiled Guile bytecode
(the .go files) for all modules used by the game. The module
source files are not included, so it’s critical that all of the
modules used by the game have been compiled.
Available options:
asset-directories
A list of directories that hold static game assets such as images or audio. Files in these directories will be copied into the bundle archive.
binary-directories
A list of directories to search for system binaries, such as
guile
. By default, /usr/bin is searched.
bundle-name
The name of the bundle archive. By default, the name is
"chickadee-bundle"
.
launcher-name
The name of the launcher script. By default, the name is
"launch-game"
.
libraries
A list of shared libraries to include in the bundle. By default, all
of the libraries necessary for running Guile, Guile-SDL2, and
Chickadee are included. This list is compatible with the names given
to the libraries on Ubuntu, which may be different than on other
distributions. In such cases, this list will need to be customized.
See below for more information on the %default-config
variable
that can be of help.
library-directories
A list of directories to search for system shared libraries. By default, the list contains common directories used by most distributions.
method
The method by which the game is launched. Can be either play
or manual
. The default is play
, which means that
chickadee play
will be used to launch the game. For games
that do not use chickadee play
, opting to start the game
loop on their own, the manual
method should be used.
play-args
A list of command line arguments to pass to chickadee play
.
Only used when the method
option is set to play
.
Default configuration options, such as the list of C shared libaries,
can be found in the %default-config
variable. This way they
can be programatically modified, if necessary.
An association list of default configuration options.
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