[Scummvm-devel] Re: 0.6.1b Build Call +platform specific features

[Max Horn]

Am 10.08.2004 um 23:57 schrieb Stefan Parviainen:

> I've been on vacation so I haven't been able to upload the 0.6.1b
> scummvm binary for BeOS until now, it should be found on the upload ftp
> server(scummvm-0.6.1b-beos-x86.pkg). Sorry for the delay.

It's gone by now, of course :-). Please either upload it again to the 
SF servers now, or upload it to a more permanent place and mail me the 
URL.


> On a different matter:
> What's the policy on platform specific features?

We try to restrict them to the backend code as much as possible. If 
that's not possible, we try to cover them by some kind of generic API. 
Last resort is to directly modify the code in question, but that 
usually is only done for either very simple or very important changes.


>  I've been playing with
> the idea to add some metadata to the savegames so it would be easier to
> organize the files (e.g. sorting savegames by game name, scummvm
> version, etc. in a standard file manager). This would be possible at
> least under BeOS + other OS's using filesystems that support metadata.
> Adding metadata support would be trivial, about 20 lines of code
> perhaps(for BeOS).
> OTOH adding platform specific features makes the code harder to read.
> Since scummvm works on quite a few platforms, the sourcecode would
> quickly become a terrible mess if too many platform specific features
> were added.
> Any thoughts about this?
>
That sounds like it could be achieved by adding a custom 
SaveFileManager for BeOS, along with extending the 
SaveFileManager/SaveFile API slightly, adding methods to specify some 
optional meta information. Then all frontends are modified to specify 
the meta data. On systems where it is supported, it can then be used, 
on other systems it just gets discarded. Right now, the only "meta 
data" I could think of would be the save name (as specified by the 
user) and maybe the target name/title...


Bye,

Max