SDL* and GL bindings

[Mike Parker]

Bruno Medeiros wrote:

> 
> But since dll's are usually packaged with the game/app itself, isn't a 
> missing dll something so rare that it is exaggerated to worry about it 
> so much? How can it happen at all, it seems so far-fetched.

That's true for things like SDL and such, but not OpenGL. Sometimes 
downloads become corrupted, installations get borked, people delete 
files by accident... there are a lot of variables.

When Herb Marselas was still with Ensemble Studios he wrote an article 
for Game Programming Gems 2 called "Protect Yourself From DLL Hell and 
Missing OS Functions" in which he advocated even loading Win32 API DLLs 
manually. I'm not sure I'd go that far, as there are other applications 
that would likely barf before a game would. But his reasoning in the 
article was sound.

In my own experience, I have gotten the missing DLL message more than 
once, from games and other applications, over the years. As absurd as it 
sounds, it happens. When your target market is not as computer literate 
as the hardcore types, it's best to make it as easy on the user as possible.


>>
>> Derelict really isn't difficult or time consuming to maintain. I just 
> 
> It's more work than a pure static-link binding, no?

Not much. The only extra work is declaring the function pointers and 
implementing the load functions. That's just a matter of copy and paste. 
  Or for the more industrious, implementing a script to handle it for you.


> 
> Wouldn't a pure header conversion work in all platforms that the 
> original header works in?...
> It doesn't work on Mac, and it didn't work before in Linux because you 
> need to add the code to the dynamic binding, right?

Right. But then that would defeat the purpose of Derelict. Again, the 
other bindings already link to the import library statically. Derelict 
is meant to provide an alternative.

> 
>>
>> For what it's worth, one of the future additions to Derelict is going 
>> to be the ability to link statically with an import library and bypass 
>> the runtime loading mechanism. 
> 
> That would be great!

I'm glad you think so, but I still don't understand why. I flip-flopped 
on this for a long time, because it means double the effort and I just 
don't see the benefit of it versus the current mechanism. Manual loading 
is much more flexible, which to me equates to "better". I can't see any 
benefit at all to linking statically to the import libraries, other than 
the fact that you don't have to call a load method as the OS will handle 
that for you. Still, I have gotten messages from a few people who really 
see it differently. If adding the feature makes it more convenient for 
people, then I don't mind, even if I don't understand.