Re: [tsc-devel] SFML Port... What is it?

Quintus | Wed, 20 Jan 2016 09:13:45 UTC

Hi,

Bugsbane <…r@f…> writes:
> I feel like I'm far behind everyone else in understanding this as I'm
> only going off issue titles in Github here, but what actually *is*
> SFML and the SFML port? Why are we doing it and what benefit does it
> bring?

Adding to what xet7 already said, it is part of the effort to clean the
lower level of our code base from the dependencies a 10-year-old
codebase left us. SFML is going to replace SDL1, which is not supported
anymore from upstream. Additionally, SFML provides a much nicer and
cleaner API than SDL that makes it easier to work with as a programmer.

For the moment, our porting efforts (port = removing SDL and replacing
it with SFML) concentrate on a 1:1 replacement where possible. On the
higher level there are no deep differences for now. Later on we will
also rework the higher level code architecture, because it contains lots
of C++ sins that occasionally make it fairly difficult to maintain (for
example, the complete lack of "private" class members as the main
expression of the secrecy principle, though I have thrown in some
"private" statements when I added new code now).

However, getting rid of unsupported dependencies is the top priority for
now. When the SFML port is complete (it nearly is, the only major thing
remaining is ticket #516[1]), the next dependency to tackle is CEGUI
0.7.9, which is also unsupported upstream. I found CEGUI 0.8.x to be
fairly usable, but have not yet had time to also look at SFGUI, which is
the other candidate for replacing this.

> I don't ask any of these questions to challenge it. I honestly have no
> idea what it is, I've seen many mentions of it, and I'm just curious.

It is always good to be curious :-)

Vale,
Quintus

[1]: https://github.com/Secretchronicles/TSC/issues/516

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