Re^5: sound and gamepad support in Perl?

...it sounds like to me that it would be very difficult to achieve cross-platform-ablility among systems

The same problem essentially arises as soon as you're using any module that links against a C library or is implemented in XS (as virtually all sound/multimedia stuff is). As soon as there's some compiled machine code involved, you have in theory at least an architecture (x86, x86_64, etc.) dependency, and in practice always also an OS dependency, because the extension makes system calls to the OS or uses one of its libraries.

The advantage of a popular Perl XS module (as opposed to some home-grown C thingy) however is that someone else might have built it for you already, and made it available for at least some platforms (such as ppm for Windows, .deb or .rpm for Linux, etc.)...

Comment on Re^5: sound and gamepad support in Perl?

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Re^6: sound and gamepad support in Perl? by AGhoulDoingPerl (Sexton) on Jan 08, 2011 at 18:45 UTC
The same problem essentially arises as soon as you're using any module that links against a C library or is implemented in XS (as virtually all sound/multimedia stuff is). ??? Doesn't Perl-to-SDL bind provides cross-platformal access to the low level sound and gamepad input to a lot of OS'es? If I use Perl to SDL bind, I thought that I could create a game for both the win32 machine and the linux one. But can't I? I'm confused now:(	[reply]
Re^7: sound and gamepad support in Perl? by Anonyrnous Monk (Hermit) on Jan 08, 2011 at 22:47 UTC
The SDL Perl module is a binding to libsdl (and various other libraries, to be precise). Those are written in C and thus have to be compiled separately for every architecture and OS. The SDL Perl module also comprises compiled shared object files (such as `Audio.so`), which serve as glue code between the Perl interpreter and the above mentioned libraries. When you say `"use SDL::Audio;"` perl dynamically loads `Audio.so` behind the scenes, which in turn loads `libsdl.so`, etc. In other words, to be able to run your SDL Perl code, those platform specific shared object files need to be installed on the target systems your code should run on. This means that - unlike with a pure-Perl module - you can't just bundle up your Perl code plus the required modules and expect it to run on every system where a standard Perl is installed. You'd either have to create a different bundle for each combination of architecture, OS, and major Perl-version (not recommended), or tell your potential users to install the SDL Perl module plus the dependent libs themselves on their system (e.g. using available precompiled packages). Once they are installed, your same Perl code will of course run on both Windows and Linux — in that sense it's "cross-platform". Hope this clears it up.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^8: sound and gamepad support in Perl? by AGhoulDoingPerl (Sexton) on Jan 09, 2011 at 15:15 UTC
Once they are installed, your same Perl code will of course run on both Windows and Linux — in that sense it's "cross-platform". That sounds good engough. Thanks for the answer:)	[reply]