Ideas for contribution?

Hi!

I know it's easy to think of ideas, and takes effort and time to do them, but what I have in my head is a few programs/scripts that would help future Linux users.

1. An automatic installer (for SL alpha):
Maybe with a bit of GUI, you'd just have to click 'Update' and it would download the newest Linux SL version from the webpage, and also unpack/install it (under your home directory), maybe even fiddle with settings.ini (or copy the old one over). Maybe it could be an SL starter, which check the version (from the web), updates if needed or just starts SL otherwise.
Even though if Lindens fix the Linux SL, this installer might become obsolete at once...

2. A diagnostics tool:
It would check if your system is set up all right: that means, checking what card you have, whether you have the right (binary NVidia or Ati) driver, right resolution (bit depth) set. If not, it could suggest actions to take ('download NVidia driver'). Hmm... Maybe check sound later, too? Or libs? Dunno.

Any other ideas?

Now, if I could only get my lazy ass moving

an automatic installer ? er. that'd be wget, a mv command, a tar command and... oh, thats it.

I didn't say that's NOT it, but hey, lazy people like me don't like typing 4-5 commands if there's a script/program already, which does it And it might even check the version, and update automatically.

It would be good if it retained your prefs between versions (should not be too difficult). Also build the libalphy.so library and modify the startup script to preload it, and move the directory to /opt or to /usr/local/games, with /usr/local/bin script to cd to the install directory and run. A single script for this would be pretty good, but pretty simple to implement. Maybe 10 lines of Bash?

Could be installed with chmod 770 chown rootecondlife with secondlife group necessary to use the game.

Worth doing I would say.

Oh.. it is NOT 10 lines. Definately not

I started writing it in Perl, using wget/tar, and I'm around 150 lines of code now... It still does just the basic stuff:
1. checks the SL webpage for version
2. compares it with local version
3. downloads the new version
4. untars the new version into /tmp
5. moves it from /tmp to the target base dir (eg. /opt/SecondLife)
6. moves over old user_settings/* files
7. creates a symlink 'current' to the new version, so you'll have a /opt/SecondLife/current
8. starts SecondLife

Again, it's not yet as good as it sounds, though Almost all error handling are missing, etc.

Too bad we can't attach files to these forums

I would leave off this part. Better to have seperate download/upgrade and run scripts...


- d.

To be honest its one thing to want to help and contribute, its quite another to start stepping on the Lindens toes.

We dont need to reinvent the installation wheel - we're on Linux! As the Linux client matures its not unrealistic to expect rpm's and ebuilds.

As for updates, I would imagine this functionallity will end up in the client as standard. The initial download and install could just be a seed client that auto updates.

One thing to bear in mind is that none of the Linux update systems are going to be quick enough for desperate SL users! I think if you're are locked out of SL due to a required update, faced with the choice between waiting for portage/etc/etc to catch up or just downloading a tar ball, I know what I will be doing.



A general hardware 3D diagnostic tool would be very valuable, something like dxdiag but for SDL and OpenGL. Actually going an getting packages etc would have to be the responsibility of the distro (again, no stepping on toes)

I think the way to go for the client is to package it for distributions like Debian or Fedora. by that way it will be possible to:

1. reuse code and library
2. The client comes to people that do not already know SecondLife

I would not say that we should have a distribution mechanism for Linux only and also not for alpha. i think most important are things like

* stabelizing the client
* audio integration

So that Linux users get the same level as windows users.

I would consider everything else as secondary.

Well, the Linux SL client is already 1.5 years (or more) late, and it's still Alpha. I think it'll still take some time for it to be 'done'.

And of course, I won't (and can't) force anyone to use my scripts, but until there's a good updater/installer, I sure will be using it.

If for nothing else, because of lazyness