Preparing a mod for Linux installation

[subtledoctor]

I don't have any kind of Linux system to test my mod on, but I gather some people are playing the game on Linux, as numerous G3 mods have Linux variants.

 

Currently the file names in my mod folder are a mishmash of upper-case and lower-case. Neither Weidu nor Windows nor OS X cares about that, which is nice. But I gather Linux is picky.

 

The Linux install instructions talk about using tolower before installing a mod... will that take care of the issue? Or do I need to do anything as a modder (like, make all of my filenames uniform) to make my mod Linux-friendly? And if the latter, is upper-case or lower-case preferred?

[lynx]

tolower is a hack, so if you make your naming consistent, that would be best. It doesn't matter what you choose, lower, upper or mixed, just be consistent. Specifically, be consistent for each file alone (eg. using Alora13.bam everywhere, not an aLora13.BAM in some other place). The global mod filename state does not matter.

[Wisp]

WeiDU actually does effectively enforce an all-lowercase policy on Linux, so merely being consistent with your case is not enough. Generally, you shouldn't have to do much, if anything, because WeiDU tries to take care of the platform stuff behind the scenes. The exceptions are if you interact with the underlying system on your own (say, by using external binaries).

[khelban12]

Some people patch wine with the "lowercase patch" for performance reasons. Wine then cannot access anything other than lowercase. A user can of course run tolower on your mod directory but if it uses lowercase files by default, you save them the trouble

[subtledoctor]

So, okay, it seems that best practice is to use lower-case file names. So, "d5_blads1.spl" etc.

 

Now, will I have to change the case of references to those files in my .tp2? Will a line like

COPY ~SoB/MC/D5_blads1.SPL~ ~override~

work with lower-case files like the one above?

[CamDawg]

So, okay, it seems that best practice is to use lower-case file names. So, "d5_blads1.spl" etc.

 

Now, will I have to change the case of references to those files in my .tp2? Will a line like

COPY ~SoB/MC/D5_blads1.SPL~ ~override~

work with lower-case files like the one above?

 

WeiDU doesn't really care about case inside the tp2--this would cause it to go looking specifically for sob/mc/d5_blads1.spl on Linux.

[Jarno Mikkola]

WeiDU doesn't really care about case inside the tp2--this would cause it to go looking specifically for sob/mc/d5_blads1.spl on Linux.

And on a Windows it would look for any file that has any lower and/or capital letters in the names, cause they are processed as identical, as in: There can't be a file that's called NErf.txt and neRF.txt in the same directory:

The big point is that it's not true on Linux/Mac's, yeah, I was wrong here about the Mac's, I don't don't know or care, what ever.

 

On an somewhat off topic discussion...

Has the BGT-weidu's worldmap update been properly verified to be working (on Linux) ? See, problems ...

[subtledoctor]

Actually Mac OS X is case-insensitive, just like Windows, it similarly won't let you have two file names in the same folder whose only difference is in capitalization. Only Linux is case-sensitive.

 

Thanks for the answers folks. I can make my mod more compatible now. Feel free to use this space for discussion of other Linux issues, the BGT map, etc.

[CamDawg]

Yeah, that's what I was trying to say.

 

WeiDU doesn't really care about file/path case in the tp2. Windows isn't case-sensitive, so it doesn't matter. On Linux, WeiDU automatically looks for a lowercase file on a lowercase path, regardless of what case you use in the tp2.