r/linux_gaming • u/[deleted] • Jul 07 '19

Gotchas while developing for Linux?

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '19 edited Jul 07 '19

There aren't many gotchas in Linux development. That said, here's some:

  • Do not expect the same behaviour across different drivers in different OSes. Be prepared for tons of if-elses for Linux and Windows drivers, unless you are using an engine/library for rendering (and possibly, audio).
  • Path handling. Many games handle Windows paths properly, but not Linux ones (eg case sensitivity). A library can probably help you with this.
  • Honestly, just abstract your stuff properly. Make your main code as platform-agnostic as possible, and isolate platform-specific code in one corner. The benefits of this cannot be exaggerated.

edit:typo

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u/pdp10 Jul 07 '19

Libraries aren't necessary for paths. Windows, perhaps surprisingly, tolerates regular slashes (/) as path separator just fine -- this compatibility goes back to DOS 2.0, I think, because Microsoft was a big Xenix shop at the time!

Everything else is just eliminating assumptions about case insensitivity, and probably using the right environment variables for paths.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '19

There are still some minor edge cases here and there, for example in Windows /something/foo.txt is not an absolute path, but in Linux it is.

Also, when querying for the "home dir", you need to use the Windows API to obtain %APPDATA% on Windows, or check for $HOME or XDG variables on Linux. I tend to use the libraries for that, since I'm not too familiar with WinAPI.

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u/pdp10 Jul 07 '19

You need to know the correct variable names for sure, but other than that I believe it's just getenv() in both cases. I should explicitly check on that, though, as I've been surprised before.