Compiling on Linux

[HunterZ]

I'm trying to see if I can get anywhere with compiling Prospector on Linux, using a Xubuntu x86-64 box.

So far, I've pulled the SVN source from the repo, and have installed FreeBASIC and verified that I can compile and run some example programs.

I'm now looking at FreeBASIC-ext/fb-extended-lib. It doesn't appear to have an updated official Linux version, so I'm probably going to have to compile that from source too (ugh).

I'm a bit concerned that even if I can get it working, it will still be impossible to run on other Linux machines unless the user installs a bunch of extra packages. Maybe I'll at least be able to document a method for other people to build their own binaries, though.

[HunterZ]

Update: Is there any way to get away from the freebasic-ext dependency? freebasic-ext just doesn't compile on Linux, and there seems to be almost no support/community for it. There also seems to be no non-deprecated official Linux release.

It also seems that the freebasic-ext source is full of bugs. Someone in the #freebasic IRC helped me squash one bug, only to run into another: http://code.google.com/p/fb-extended-li ... tail?id=29

I tried commenting out the sqlite3 driver with the assumption that Prospector doesn't use it, but then hit yet another bug. What a piece of junk; I think I'm going to throw in the towel!

[magellan]

Actually the only thing it uses from ext is the freetype bindings.
You are right. Maybe finding an alternative for that is a good idea.

[HunterZ]

The latest version of FreeBASIC appears to have built-in FreeType2 support. There is an examples/graphics/FreeType directory with two example programs.

Also: http://www.freebasic.net/wiki/wikka.php ... bfreetype2

Edit: Looks like you're also using ext/hash/crc32.bi.

[magellan]

Fascinating.
I just realized I hardly ever use the ext freetype binding (Actually only to draw the titles for things like highscore and the main screen)
crc32 is used for zipped savegames. There are 2 things about that:
1) It's nice to have because they zip really well
2) In a world of TB drives it really doesn't matter that much.

I am calling it a night for today, but chances are that I will be able to finish replacing those 2 by tomorrow.

[HunterZ]

The latest version of FreeBASIC also comes with built-in zlib bindings. Is that not sufficient for implementing compressed save support? It looks like it also has a built-in crc32 thing.

Here's a patch with an example program: http://sourceforge.net/p/fbc/patches/30/


Failing that, I'm sure you can get a crc32 algorithm from somewhere else, like one of these:

http://www.freebasic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6399
http://forum.qbasicnews.com/index.php?t ... 352.0;wap2

The FreeBASIC Extended Library also allows you to redistribute their source (as long as you follow the license requirements: http://code.google.com/p/fb-extended-lib/wiki/License), so you could rip their crc32 algorithm too if it doesn't depend too much on other parts of the lib.

[magellan]

Down to 1 error message when compiling on linux. But it's a headscratcher
cannot find -lsupc++
Sometimes it also says that it is skipping an incompatible 64 bit supc++ version

Anyway I uploaded the current source stripped of the ext library to the googlecode repository. If anybody wants to give it a shot, be my guest.

[HunterZ]

I'll give it another go when I'm at home and have time. Hopefully that will be sometime this evening.

In the meantime, do you have g++ installed on your Linux box? libsupc++ is supposed to be part of that. If you're using Debian/Ubuntu or a derivative, you'll want to run "sudo apt-get install build-essential" to get those.

Edit: You may also want to try doing "sudo apt-get install g++-multilib" to get 32-bit g++ stuff installed.

[HunterZ]

[HunterZ]