A few question re: Linux Distro Repositories

[delta]

I've been looking into ways to distribute Ren'Py games the "proper" way for their respective platforms. This is an executable installer for Windows (downloadable from a website) and a runnable .app in a .dmg for OS X (downloadable from a website). Now, for Linux, most nontechnical users are advised to get their software from the repositories of their distribution. For people not immersed into the Linux community backend, that poses a few questions which are not only applicable to Ren'Py but for any game running on Linux (Or free BSDs/other Unices, but I know even less about those):

* What does one have to do to make the game even installable from a distro on the technical side? (Obviously wrap it in a package, for which technical but not impossibly complicated instructions are available). I think .deb for Ubuntu and the rest of the Debian world and .rpm for most other major distros are a must. But is it even feasible to do that oneself? And is it desirable even if you are unable or choose not to get in a repository?
* What does one have to do to get into a distro at all? Which people to talk to, which processes to follow, etc.?
* Especially if you don't have the skills or motivation to become a full package maintainer yourself?
* It's plainly obvious that to get into the "main" repo, you'd have to be GPL, comparable, or freer, but chances are you're not. Most distros I know of also have nonfree/sortakindafree repositories. But is it even feasible to attempt to get into those if you're not a binary graphics card driver, but a CC-BY-ND or other freeware game?
* Just for curiosity: Would any repository even accept adult content? I think it's highly probable that nobody even tried before.

I ask this mostly to Renpytom, who has a couple of packages in Universe, but any knowledge/opinion is welcome.

[Spiky Caterpillar]

I've been looking into ways to distribute Ren'Py games the "proper" way for their respective platforms. This is an executable installer for Windows.

On Windows, I personally prefer the 'just decompress and run' approach to using an installer, even if the installer is considered 'proper'. I suppose new users might like a self-extracting exe, though, and inexperienced windows users tend to not understand things that aren't in their start menu.

Now, for Linux, most nontechnical users are advised to get their software from the repositories of their distribution. For people not immersed into the Linux community backend, that poses a few questions which are not only applicable to Ren'Py but for any game running on Linux (Or free BSDs/other Unices, but I know even less about those):

* What does one have to do to make the game even installable from a distro on the technical side? (Obviously wrap it in a package, for which technical but not impossibly complicated instructions are available). I think .deb for Ubuntu and the rest of the Debian world and .rpm for most other major distros are a must. But is it even feasible to do that oneself? And is it desirable even if you are unable or choose not to get in a repository?

There's not really much point to using an rpm or deb package unless you're putting it in a repository - the benefits of using packages are primarily dependency tracking, ease of upgrade (which is a relatively low priority for a finished game), and the convenience of looking in the repository for things. For .debs, at least, making your own apt repository is not particularly hard, and a repository full of Ren'Py games could easily be made even if the distros are disinterested in adding every game the community comes up with.

Distros are particular about where exactly things go. OpenBSD and FreeBSD put an awful lot of stuff in /usr/local/ - I think everything that they consider not essential. Debian expects your packages to stay OUT of /usr/local/ entirely . I'm not sure how much variation there is among Debian-based distributions on where to put things, but that could effect packaging.

It would be possible to sever game data from the runtime, so all the games depended on renpy-runtime-680 or renpy-runtime-663 and so forth, which could save some space for people who have large numbers of renpy games installed at once - but it's not viable to do that for games which have patched the engine, and I think it would make packaging a fair bit fiddlier.

* What does one have to do to get into a distro at all? Which people to talk to, which processes to follow, etc.?

I believe that that's rather distro-specific.

* Especially if you don't have the skills or motivation to become a full package maintainer yourself?

Then you probably need to convince a package maintainer with a bit more skill to do it for you.

* It's plainly obvious that to get into the "main" repo, you'd have to be GPL, comparable, or freer, but chances are you're not. Most distros I know of also have nonfree/sortakindafree repositories. But is it even feasible to attempt to get into those if you're not a binary graphics card driver, but a CC-BY-ND or other freeware game?

The binary drivers worry me more than a non-free game does, as those dwell in the kernel - a game, I can just run it as a different user than my usual account and if it does anything evil or stupid, the damage is contained. And I've definitely seen non-free games finding their way into nonfree repositories (Shareware Doom and Quake immediately leap to mind.)

[Hentai Senshi]

* Just for curiosity: Would any repository even accept adult content? I think it's highly probable that nobody even tried before.

Well, if the distro repositories don't like adult content, I'd be happy to set up a hentai .deb repository. (Probably also an RPM one, but I've never packaged RPMs so don't know how much work it will be.)

[Guest]

There is no need for a repository.
I mean, to play Renpy games all I have to do is double click the game.sh script. If I only have the exe file, the only difference is that I have to open the exe with Wine and then open the Terminal, go to the newly created directory, and run "python game.py"

There is Renpy in the Ubuntu directory, but it was giving me weird errors. So I just downloaded the latest version from the site, unzipped and ran the sh script.

The only thing one might need to do is install python, but that's very easy with the package managers... you just open it, type python, install the appropriate package.

[usul]

I agree with guest here. There's no obligation to have your game in a repo. You can download the tar ball (compressed folder) like you would on a win or mac platform.

I'm not sure what you have to do to be listed on a repo though.