[Kde-games-devel] openAL is now mandatory - WAS - Re: Build failed in Jenkins: libkdegames_frameworks_qt5 #1

[Albert Astals Cid]

El Divendres, 12 de setembre de 2014, a les 22:20:20, Ian Wadham va escriure:
> On 12/09/2014, at 8:58 PM, Albert Astals Cid wrote:
> > El Divendres, 12 de setembre de 2014, a les 16:10:15, Anuj Pahuja va 
escriure:
> >>>>> Jenkins needs to be equipped with the OpenAL library.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> But who do we tell? "KDE CI System <null at kde.org>" seems
> >>>>> a rather unpromising address… :-)
> >>>>> 
> >>>>>> -- The following REQUIRED packages have been found:
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> * ECM (required version >= 0.0.9)
> >>>>>> * Qt5Core (required version >= 5.3.1)
> >>>>>> * Qt5Gui (required version >= 5.3.1)
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> etc.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>>> -- The following OPTIONAL packages have not been found:
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> * OpenAL
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> I think it is high time we made OpenAL MANDATORY in libkdegames.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> It has had about 3 years as optional now, and Phonon has not had a
> >>>>> good track record with games...
> >>>> 
> >>>> Indeed. Essentially, it is a REQUIRED package for building libkdegames
> >>>> (frameworks).
> >>> 
> >>> Why is something that was optional now required?
> >> 
> >> I don't exactly know. When I started porting libkdegames, I wasn't able
> >> to
> >> build it without installing OpenAL first. So I assumed it would/should be
> >> a
> >> required package.
> 
> The same thing happened on the Apple OS X Jenkins CI, but with a different
> error message, involving Phonon.  Libkdegames built OK after OpenAL was
> provided.
> 
> > Nope, it should not be required as it was not required before.
> 
> Albert, I think you might have been away from the KDE Games list  (in
> Ireland?), when all this was decided, a little over three years ago.
> 
> A number of games were having trouble playing sounds using Phonon.  Sounds
> would be played late for the corresponding game event or not played at all. 
> Sound quality was poor and sounds that coincided or overlapped were not
> being played correctly.
> 
> Stefan Majewski came up with a new sound library for games, based on OpenAL,
> and several of us tried it and found that it gave a huge improvement.  In
> fact it played the sounds perfectly every time.  That library became
> KgSound and was added to libkdegames by Stephan.
> 
> KgSound's preferred dependencies are and always have been OpenAL and
> libsndfile (which decodes .ogg, files etc.).  We could not be sure, at the
> time, whether those dependencies would be available on all platforms. 
> Also, at the time, KDE builds supported only OPTIONAL or REQUIRED, nothing
> in between, and nothing like first preference, second preference, etc.
> which is what we would have really liked.
> 
> The only thing for it, on the first release of KgSound, was to make the
> dependencies on OpenAL and libsndfile OPTIONAL, with some strong
> recommendation messages in the build if they were not provided, then to
> fall back to Phonon (which is not preferred) if the dependencies were not
> available somewhere where libkdegames might be built.
> 
> One of my games, KGoldrunner, is built with NO sound if OpenAL and
> libsndfile are not available when libkdegames is built.  It has many cases
> of rapid, short sounds and overlapping sounds, which have to synchronise
> precisely with the gameplay.  It issues a warning message to the end-user
> if sound is not available.
> 
> AFAIK this has not eventuated and all distros are following our advice to
> build libkdegames with OpenAL and libsndfile for best results.  There have
> certainly been no bug reports from users, in the last three years, about
> sound being missing from KGoldrunner.
> 
> Unfortunately, Stefan departed from KDE Games before his work on libkdegames
> was complete, but I am sure, if he had remained, he would have at some time
> changed OpenAL and libsndfile to REQUIRED.
> 
> I believe we could make them REQUIRED now.

We could make them REQUIRED, but I don't think that should be an artifact of 
the porting.

Cheers,
  Albert

> 
> Cheers, Ian W.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> kde-games-devel mailing list
> kde-games-devel at kde.org
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-games-devel