Re: [TuxKart-devel] Re: [Tuxkart-cvs] tuxkart/src Driver.h,1.14,1.15 joystick.h,1.3,1.4 PlayerDriver.cxx,1.12,1.13 sdldrv.cxx,1.16,1.17 sdldrv.h,1.6,1.7

[James G. <jam...@bt...>]

On Sun, 2004-08-08 at 00:15, Steve Baker wrote:

> Do you maintain any projects of your own?
> 
> I maintain several...and have done so for many years.
> 
> Unless you make things *extremely* simple then any game of any kind of
> complexity at all will rapidly result in you getting 20 emails a day
> from people who are having problems with it.
> 
> It's bad enough helping people just to get OpenGL running - with
> PLIB and Tuxkart.  Adding more libraries to the mix (especially SDL
> which is the WORST culprit in this regard) just makes things exponentially
> harder to maintain.

> Unless you've done this, you have no comprehension of how much hassle
> it is.
> 
> So - keep things SIMPLE.  Definitely there won't be two versions maintained
> by me.  

I never said there would be. Put a link to the Linux Game Tome forums
and point people there if they have SDL-related problems, but I really
can't see that many will do.

> Leaving the GoTM 'version' under CVS is a given - that's what version
> control is for.  But having two versions for Joe Public to download?  No way!

I don't understand your irrational hatred for SDL. SDL:

- is already installed on the computer of every single Linux user who
plays games
- is pre-installed on the sort of Linux distros that beginners use
- uses package config to alleviate problems with different install
locations
- has an incredibly stable API
- has a huge community of people maintaining it

How exactly does this make it the "WORST" library maintenence-wise? I
know I'm being incredibly hypocritical in that I said I wouldn't argue
when I had no hope of changing people's minds, but, well, nevermind.

	James