[Openal] deployement

[Andre Krause]

Jason Daly wrote:
> Andre Krause wrote:
>> static linking has some advantages. for example, if you make a small 
>> internet-downloadable game, you really do not want the gamer/user
>>
>> 1. put through many clicks of an installer or
>> 2. put him the burden to unzip some archive (yes.. there definitely 
>> are casual gamers who cant handle a zip tool or use the xp built in 
>> zip functionality) or
>> 3. manually install openAL
> 
> Just a counterpoint, if you run the oalinst.exe installer with the /s 
> switch, there is no clicking at all, and it does it's job in less than a 
> second.
> 
> Also, keep in mind that OpenAL is released under LGPL, so statically 
> linking to it may have consequences.
> (I'm not saying static linking is bad, just that there are things to 
> consider if you go that direction).
> 

i had written a longer reply prior to your post, but openAL seems to
have some mailinglist troubles. so i repeat my old email here, wich brings
up some arguments why oalinst.exe is problematic for my special case.

----- old email that was not delivered ----
i must admit my project is kind of a special case. nonetheless, it is not a very uncommon
and imho growing scenario (see also this thread on libSDL mailing list:
http://lists.libsdl.org/pipermail/sdl-libsdl.org/2007-September/062841.html )

i have a single executable game downloadable from a website, that i want to be ready to run
without any installers and stuff, not even with the need to unzip, as this is another burden
some casual gamers cant handle.

if i would add the openAL installer to my game resources (wich are just appended at the end
of the exe, compressed with bzip2), i

1. would need some writable temporary space to extract the installer

2. run some rather obscure, nonportable syscommand to execute the extracted installer
    (and who knows, a firewall might kick in)

3. my code would get more complicated, as i cant use implicit linking to the dll via
    the lib anymore. i would have to use a bunch of non-cross-platform code using LoadLibrary
    and GetProcAddress, to dynamically see if openAL is installed and if not, first run the
    installer and afterwards try again to LoadLib. if i would go that complicated route,
    i could as well use the extremely complicated loading of dlls from memory method
   ( http://www.joachim-bauch.de/tutorials/load_dll_memory.html/en#loading-the-library )

and as my project is open-source, i have absolutely no problem releasing my source code.

so i argue that there is really a need for static lib versions of openAL.

i already use a static linked version of openAL (i just needed to tweak the svn-source a tiny bit),
and thus far i have no problems on whatever machine i run my game on. of course, this way i don't
have hardware acceleration on vista... but generic software mode, that is enough for me, still works.



p.s. can we please change the mailing list behaviour in that way, that if i reply to a post,
it goes to the mailing list, not to the author of the previous message only?