thumbs up!
I dont use debian(based) distros.
@cjwijtmans The point is that pretty any deb package can easily be ported to rpm or other distributions and their package systems. As I know there are many tools for exporting to pacman (arch linux), yum (suse) or portage (gentoo), for example.
Once the initial compiling step is done you can easily modify the build files - as they all have similar dependency architectures, only the package metadata format itself differs.
I guarantee it's even easier to convert an Arch package to a deb. Definitely easier to use the non-cruft ridden pacman as well. Easier to use makepkg than something like dh_make too. Easier to get something into AUR and then into the core repos on top of that. Therefore I demand that Valve remove their entire Steam pipeline and subscribe to the Arch philosophy and only distribute their packages to the AUR in the form of a PKGBUILD.
There are no plans to switch to a native distribution's packaging system at the moment as this code is leveraged across many distributions and operating systems.
If there is no plan to utilize a more useful package management to avoid
a. outdated dependencies and
b. non functional (sometimes paid) software,
how do you want to deliver fully functional software which makes your users happy?
The steam runtime is more than a package to run steam.
The steam runtime is also important to run many games.
Also it gives game developers a common framework to build on so it will run
on all distros.
My distro would not run any game at all since i every package i run are
build on newer source code and testing packages.
Live long and prosper,
Christ-Jan Wijtmans
https://github.com/cjwijtmans
http://facebook.com/cj.wijtmans
http://twitter.com/cjwijtmans
On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 11:36 AM, Marco Bahn [email protected]:
If there is no plan to utilize a more useful package management to avoid
a. outdated dependencies and
b. non functional (sometimes paid) software,
how do you want to deliver fully functional software which makes your
users happy?—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3264#issuecomment-41020707
.
@Plagman That's why you should start a discussion about it. Because pretty any issue here is related to dependency problems which you can solve easily without under a week of work. Closing and avoiding discussions about development cycle improvements is a warning sign for me as a developer, as I usually skip every software project that reacts that way. Pretty everything is locked down 100%, no public access possible to help you guys on development.
@martensms the steam runtime will never work with all distributions, you're free to disable the steam runtime with STEAM_RUNTIME=0 and use other means to resolve dependencies. At this time, valve does not intend to give direct support to these systems, but they also do not summarily dismiss issue reports from systems with the runtime disabled. Last time I checked, only some gentoo devs are managing dependencies without the steam runtime (and it's not the default configuration). The steam runtime is one of those defective-by-design things that is easy to sell on paper, but there will be endless issues that will crop up as (GNU/)linux changes over time.
I wanted to ask why Valve doesn't use a deb based architecture to distribute packages?
I have the feeling that linux beta users (and therefore worthful free testers giving feedback) can't be integrated in the development process.
I mean, most guys are posting issues like #3238 or #3204 to help you speed up the development process (and I've got to note that this is not standard, as it requires much amazing, many knowledge about compiling or the OS itself - so it's way better than "My OS is not running, my CD drive is broken - what shall I do?").
But there's no way to verify that the final update has landed on my computer. So on your side you will lose valuable feedback of a C++ developer that could help you for free. I repeat, many C++ developers that will debug your runtime. For free.
Your update system is useless as latency of over 2 months is added until users can verify that everything that was rolled out actually works. And actually, it still doesn't work on my system. That makes me want to get my money back and I bet other Linux users think the same. Meanwhile, Ubuntu LTS has shipped, and my steam is still useless as you are using a library that is in its legacy-variant at least over 1 year old. 1 year on linux is like 100 years internet time :)
Why don't you use a package distribution system of any kind? debs can be easily converted to rpm etc. and it would speed up the development workflow without adding disadvantages.
From my point of view you will save many time:
I don't see a valid excuse why not to switch to a native-OS based update system here. I can see that you don't want to use it on Windows, but why to avoid it on Linux systems?
(Off Topic: Around 3 of 5 issues are related to library dependency errors. That all can be solved easily.)