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* Chickadee: (chickadee). Game programming toolkit for Guile.
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<title>Invoking chickadee bundle (The Chickadee Game Toolkit)</title>
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<span id="Invoking-chickadee-bundle"></span><div class="header">
<p>
Previous: <a href="Invoking-chickadee-play.html" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Invoking chickadee play</a>, Up: <a href="Command-Line-Interface.html" accesskey="u" rel="up">Command Line Interface</a> [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Index.html" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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<hr>
<span id="Invoking-chickadee-bundle-1"></span><h3 class="section">3.2 Invoking <code>chickadee bundle</code></h3>
<p>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
<code>chickadee bundle</code> tool creates redistributable binary bundles
by combining the game code and assets with shared libraries and
executables from the host operating system.
</p>
<p>Bundling is currently only supported on Linux. In the future, it may
be possible to bundle on MacOS. Patches very much welcome for that.
</p>
<p>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
<a href="https://guix.gnu.org">GNU Guix</a> 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.
</p>
<p>To get started with bundling, simply add a <samp>bundle.scm</samp> file to
the root of the project directory. It could look something like this:
</p>
<div class="example">
<pre class="example">'((asset-directories . ("images" "models"))
(bundle-name . "the-legend-of-emacs-1.0")
(code . "the-legend-of-emacs.scm")
(launcher-name . "the-legend-of-emacs"))
</pre></div>
<p>To create the bundle, simply run <code>chickadee bundle</code>. Upon
success, the file <samp>the-legend-of-emacs-1.0.tar.gz</samp> would be
created in the current directory.
</p>
<p>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.
</p>
<p>In addition to including system libraries and executables,
<code>chickadee bundle</code> also includes the compiled Guile bytecode
(the <samp>.go</samp> files) for all modules used by the game. The module
source files are <em>not</em> included, so it’s critical that all of the
modules used by the game have been compiled.
</p>
<p>Available options:
</p>
<ul>
<li> <code>asset-directories</code>
<p>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.
</p>
</li><li> <code>binary-directories</code>
<p>A list of directories to search for system binaries, such as
<code>guile</code>. By default, <samp>/usr/bin</samp> is searched.
</p>
</li><li> <code>bundle-name</code>
<p>The name of the bundle archive. By default, the name is
<code>"chickadee-bundle"</code>.
</p>
</li><li> <code>launcher-name</code>
<p>The name of the launcher script. By default, the name is
<code>"launch-game"</code>.
</p>
</li><li> <code>libraries</code>
<p>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 <code>%default-config</code> variable
that can be of help.
</p>
</li><li> <code>library-directories</code>
<p>A list of directories to search for system shared libraries. By
default, the list contains common directories used by most
distributions.
</p>
</li><li> <code>method</code>
<p>The method by which the game is launched. Can be either <code>play</code>
or <code>manual</code>. The default is <code>play</code>, which means that
<code>chickadee play</code> will be used to launch the game. For games
that do not use <code>chickadee play</code>, opting to start the game
loop on their own, the <code>manual</code> method should be used.
</p>
</li><li> <code>play-args</code>
<p>A list of command line arguments to pass to <code>chickadee play</code>.
Only used when the <code>method</code> option is set to <code>play</code>.
</p>
</li></ul>
<p>Default configuration options, such as the list of C shared libaries,
can be found in the <code>%default-config</code> variable. This way they
can be programatically modified, if necessary.
</p>
<dl>
<dt id="index-_0025default_002dconfig">Variable: <strong>%default-config</strong></dt>
<dd><p>An association list of default configuration options.
</p></dd></dl>
<hr>
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Previous: <a href="Invoking-chickadee-play.html" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Invoking chickadee play</a>, Up: <a href="Command-Line-Interface.html" accesskey="u" rel="up">Command Line Interface</a> [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Index.html" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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