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game-data-packager's Gtk launcher stub
======================================
Here are some design notes about the Gtk game launcher.
Requirements
------------
All of these are already implemented, and should be kept.
* Written in a high-level language (not a shell script with Zenity or
xdialog)
- complex shell scripts are a pain to keep maintainable
* All logic is in `game-data-packager.deb` or a future
`game-data-packager-runtime.deb`, not in the .deb that g-d-p produces
- the logic might have bugs which we want to fix
- we can rely on being able to update g-d-p itself via normal Debian
mechanisms
- we cannot rely on being able to update anything in a g-d-p-generated
.deb
* Has a GUI
- games are often run from menu systems
* Can check whether a representative sample of required files are present
- some games' data sets have non-obvious tangles of dependencies
* Each user is prompted before running a binary-only game like Unreal
so they can choose to not run it
- this is per-user so that users can choose to run all binary-only
games as uid "jbloggs-games" or something, and protect their
(potentially root-equivalent) normal uid "jbloggs" from attacks
via compromised games
* The launcher does not `chdir()` or manipulate `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` until the
binary-only game is actually run, and the `.desktop` file does not have
to use `WorkingDirectory=`
- again, this is to protect individual uids from being attacked via a
compromised game that they accidentally run from a menu, even if `.`
is already (unwisely) on a search path
* Optionally constructs a symbolic link farm from one or more system-wide
search directories
- this is required for Unreal 1
* If constructing a symlink farm, can copy selected files instead of
linking them
- this is required for `*.ini` in Unreal 1
* Games can ship their own proprietary icons which will be used by our
.desktop files
- we don't have a Free reinterpretation of the logo for all games
"Nice to have"
--------------
All of these are already implemented, and it would be nice to keep them.
* Game metadata is also in `g-d-p.deb` or `g-d-p-runtime.deb`,
so we can fix its bugs
- As currently implemented, it's in an extra section in
/usr/share/games/g-d-p/unreal-gold.desktop
or similar. It isn't clear whether this is the right solution.
* The game only installs proprietary files that we cannot fix anyway,
and symbolic links to stable paths provided by g-d-p or a separate
game engine like ioquake3
- `/usr/games/unreal-gold` -> `/usr/share/games/g-d-p-runtime/gdp-launcher`
- `/usr/share/applications/unreal-gold.desktop` ->
`/usr/share/games/g-d-p-runtime/unreal-gold.desktop`
* Errors while launching the game are displayed in the GUI
* Does not import from `game_data_packager` and does not rely
on the YAML/JSON, or only relies on a defined subset (tbd)
- this means we can consider splitting out
`game-data-packager-runtime.deb` in future
* GUI is done with a modern toolkit that supports Wayland, etc.,
and has nice Python bindings
- implementation detail: it's currently Gtk 3
* freedesktop.org basedir compliant
- uses `XDG_DATA_HOME`, etc., for games that do not already have a
well-established dot-directory
* Implementation does not entirely rule out being able to install game data
"for just me" while unprivileged
- this may seem rather backwards, but there's some value in having
a tool like g-d-p shared between multiple games instead of each game
inventing its own
TODO
----
* Ability to make e.g. `~/.loki/ut` a symlink to e.g. `$XDG_DATA_HOME/ut99`
if the former does not already exist?
- we would need to be prepared to fall back to `~/.loki/ut` being a real
directory, though
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