Building deb files?

[T-Bone]

It would be awesome if there was a tool or a guide on how to make a .deb file for a LÖVE game. Distributing for Linux is always tricky, so it would really help. Is there any guides/tools available?

[cattail]

I use debian 6 (squeeze) , and use apt-get install love , it's so easy , never use a deb file.
But it's version is too old , maybe checkout testing, sid something.

And If I test something hat not in apt , like love 0.7.x (0.8.0 unrelease ) Version , I wget the tar ball, with the guide in forum , wiki
./configure ,make ,make install , it's OK for me .

make deb? not yet ...

[pk]

Are you sure you want to go thru all this and even this just to create a deb for your game? Just give Linux folks a zip and point them to the LOVE website for the binary.

[Robin]

Or one of us (it might be me, at some point in the magical future where I have spare time) could write a love2deb script, because I think in the case of games made with LÖVE, much of the process if not all of it can be completely automated.

[tsturzl]

Are you sure you want to go thru all this and even this just to create a deb for your game? Just give Linux folks a zip and point them to the LOVE website for the binary.

Or you could have the .deb package depend on love, or even a certain version of love. This way if the love version is met in the repositories, it will be installed, otherwise you could have it install a love packed in with the deb. Another cool idea is to have the deb add a repository for your love game(get one on Launch pad) then whenever you release updates, users can use their update managers or apt-get dist-upgrade to update the game.

Often times the problem with installing the version from the repositories is its out-dated. You'll just have to consider what version of love people are going to have with different distro's(latest ubuntu and debian), consider the down falls of the out-dated engine. Does it lack features you require, if not does it have any major flaws?

I'd say love files are perfectly fine for distribution, but really I only think this applies within the love community. If you made an indie game, and you wanted to ship it you want your end user to know how to install and play the game. Give them a love file and they'll probably be very confused. I'd say an installed is the way to go, even on windows. If you have a single executable you're still shipping the entire engine with your game, and if they have 10 games that are all love2d games, then they'll have 10 copies of love...

[T-Bone]

Deb files have several advantages. The most obvious is that the installation process is completely invisible to the end user. I see no problem with having a deb file that installs the LÖVE binary from the repositories, since modern versions of Ubuntu has an up-to-date version of LÖVE. And you can quite easily make your game compatible with at least 0.7.0, and with that you would target most of the Linux market.

Having multiple LÖVE binaries installed, one for each game, isn't too bad either. LÖVE isn't enormous, and the risk of end users having a significant amount of LÖVE games is quite low. What's important is that it works, and that the end user shouldn't have to worry about how.

Or one of us (it might be me, at some point in the magical future where I have spare time) could write a love2deb script, because I think in the case of games made with LÖVE, much of the process if not all of it can be completely automated.

That would be amazing.

[nevon]

Check this thread. I have written posts on both publishing to a ppa and a quick-and-dirty deb file.