bzfs debian package and plugin support

[nostromo]

Hi everybody,

Im relativly new to this, therfore I ask for a little help.
I can use a debian (lenny) server and want to host - for some private lanparty - a bzflag server.
I can deal with setting up an server on windows, and have no problems. But on linux, I am really a noobish beginner.

I tried to compile bzfs for a day, but everytime I get some failures, some dependencies not installed, or some cruel messages while doing ./configure. seems I need some time to get used to linux (by terminal though).

So my first question is:
Is there a debian deb-package with activated plugin support (you know, --enable-shared)? The one I found was without plugin support.

Second question:
I want to use the spawnrecord plugin (http://my.bzflag.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=12003); can I use the precompiled .so - file (compiled on mac)? If not, where do I get a compiled one or the source?

I really apreciate every help in this; thnx in advance

[mrapple]

First Answer: im sure someone was made a compiled bzfs for debian with plugin support but im sure you could find another one somewhere

Second Answer: yes you can use the plugin that was compiled on a mac on linux i believe. and the sourve was avaiable in the post if you look at the bottom. there is also a compiled .so that someone else attached that works for me if yours doesnt work.

need any more help? let me know

[blast]

I don't think there is a .deb that has support for plugins. Version 2.0.x didn't have plugin support enabled by default, so the majority of packages provided by linux distributions don't provide it. Your best bet is to figure out why you can't get it to build on linux. Make sure that you have libcurl (and dev package), libtool, gcc, g++, make, and the autotools. (I'm probably forgetting something, but that should get you close) And make sure you pass --enable-shared to ./configure, or else you won't have plugin support.

If the plugin was compiled on a Mac, then you definitely can't use it on Linux. Even if it was built on Linux, you might still have to rebuild it if some system dependencies don't match up right and/or if the server version doesn't match up. You will have to add that plugin to the build system of bzflag and do the usual autogen.sh and configure and make.

[nostromo]

I was able to compile bzflag , bzfs,..

Wasnt that hard after all needed packages and dependencies found their place
I compiled with --enable-shared --enable-optimized, but the resulting binaries looking really big to me. Is that normal?

bzflag: ~ 23 MB
bzfs: ~15 MB
bzadmin: ~3,5 MB

The deb. package I installed before (without plugin support) had only 3.5 MB for bzfs.

[mrapple]

bzflag: ~ 23 MB
bzfs: ~15 MB
bzadmin: ~3,5 MB

looks fine to me. sometimes it seems pre-compiled binaries take up less space, for example on ubuntu (apt-get install bzflag-server) everything is around 1-5 MB. heres how stuff usually looks when I compile it from source.

bzflag ~ 20 MB
bzfs ~ 14 MB
bzadmin ~ 3 MB

hope this helps.

[blast]

If you want them to be smaller, you can strip the binaries (ex: strip src/bzfs/bzfs). The distributed package probably has this done already. I normally use debug builds anyway, so I'm used to larger file sizes.

[nostromo]

Thnx for the help mrapplecomputer1 / blast.

The size isnt a problem for me, just wanted to be sure that its not based on a compiling error.

[anomaly]

I usually do a "make install-strip". Most of us don't need to run the debug version. That will take bzflag down to about 2.4 Megs and bzfs to about 1.7 Megs. I don't build bzadmin so I don't know about that.

[nostromo]

to close this topic:

I tried it with "make install-strip" and the resulting sizes have been:

bzadmin ~ 0.35 MB
bzfag ~ 2.5 MB
bzfs ~ 1.8 MB

thnx anomaly

Maybe I add the question: what is striped from the binary? Is there a difference in functionality to the "big ones" I compiled?

--------------
Update:
anomaly told me this (later), so I think I add it too:

... the only thing stripped out from the binary is debug info such as symbol names, type info for symbols, file and line number for the symbols, etc. This stuff isn't even loaded when the binary is run by the OS. It's used by debuggers. So no, no functionality is lost. ..