[Scummvm-devel] Bringing our Core Code to another Level?

Matthew Hoops clone2727 at gmail.com
Tue Aug 13 01:06:03 CEST 2013


On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 10:05 AM, Johannes Schickel
<lordhoto at scummvm.org> wrote:
> I think such a split off core resulting in an unbranded (i.e. no ScummVM
> name on it except for credits to its origins) project would be a really
> nice thing to do in the long run. Of course, ScummVM would then use this
> same core as much as possible. Thus, I think we should really discuss
> whether this is something people would agree with.
>
> So, any thoughts on this?
Yeah: I think it's not doable.

So, if there's a second project, there's really two ways that it can
be attempted:
1. As an actual external library
2. As just source that gets pulled into the binary

As fuzzie pointed out, 1 makes no sense, so let's not even go there.

But, really, the second method makes things impossible for us to keep
in sync. Right now, if there's a change to the core code, every single
calling piece of code has to be updated; it forces us to keep our
engines in sync with the core code. How would they be kept in sync,
anyway? Would we just rely on "most recent revision" of the code?

In the end, I don't see what benefit *at all* this has for ScummVM.
Even Residual doesn't benefit from most of our core; they rewrote a
lot of OSystem to fit their incompatible graphics code. And then they
cut out whatever code is irrelevant to them (and they should; if they
don't need AAC, they shouldn't bring it in of course).

It seems to me that it would be much more logical to work on making
our common code more modular while keeping it in-tree. That way we can
keep everything in sync with whatever common code changes we make
easily and also allow other projects to pick and choose what they
want.

-Matt




More information about the Scummvm-devel mailing list