openmw.org

OpenMW is in the experimental repository of Debian contrib. From now on, users should use that repository rather than the one at people.debian.org. To use it, you must:

1) Add the unstable and experimental repositories (needed for libraries like ogre-1.9)
2) Set your apt preferences to not install unstable packages unless explicitly asked to

Details are here:
https://wiki.debian.org/AptPreferences
http://jaqque.sbih.org/kplug/apt-pinning.html

Step #1, add these two lines to /etc/apt/sources.list [and remove the people.debian.org one if you were using it before]

Step #2, create or add this to /etc/apt/preferences
then that will install openmw and the required libraries from unstable without touching anything else that has already been installed on your system.

This is experimental, but please try it out and let me know how it works!

Thanks a lot for this.

Awesome work so far. Thanks!

Do we have any debian people to test this?

hmm. i was looking for a way to play the original morrowind by using wine. it lags a bit at 1440x900. now i ended up registering here and installing openmw. now you've got someone who will test it on debian/wheezy amd64 ;D

Awesome!

Yes, there are debian users to test it. I am sorry to have not given more efforts into making debs myself, so I can at least do some testing.

First thoughts about packaging:
1) It sounds like I already have a repo providing libbullet, probably the one from which I installed unvanquished. Same version, so maybe you could speak with those guys. Having to do the packaging job by two teams is sad, and maybe you could speak with them to unite (and reduce) the work, and maybe submit it to debian's team?
2) openmw's engine is not a non-free software for debian. It should be in contrib, as its only real dependency outside "main" is the nvidia toolkit. If it was removed, and I think it can be set as "recommended" (not sure), it could be in "main". The only thing which should be in contrib would be a script to detect Elder Scroll 3 's data, which is a non-free stuff. I think I have read about people wanting to build total conversion, and I have also read somewhere here that people were planning to create a demo, so removing that nvidia dependency could allow to send openmw in the "main" section.
3) openmw-launcher binary have a weird name: omwlauncher. Since I run my applications from terminals or dmenu, renaming it might be a good idea. Not for me, but for other people doing things in the same way than me. If I understand correctly what I can read on debian-user mailing list, my situation is not so uncommon for a debian user. I think a name like "openmw-launcher" would be more easy to guess without a menu.
4) it could be interesting to create a deb which create a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ containing the line to add in sources.list. I know that trick thanks to opera. I could create such deb file manually if needed, it only takes 5 minutes. But I have no idea about signing stuff, so I can not do that part of the job.

About source code "issues" (easy to say, and maybe hard to fix issues):
5) I am not sure, but I think there was a way to avoid disabling the second screen when running openmw. I also notice that, when openmw is ran without game data, it disable the second screen for nothing (I am using xrandr stuff combined with nouveau driver, so maybe the problem come from nvidia toolkit?).
6) if openmw-launcher or openmw was able to let us create a game which starts at starting point and with physics enabled by default, it could be interesting, because it would allow to try new stuff added more easily.

Except those points, openmw perfectly runs out of the box on an amd64 debian. Congratulations and thanks!
I have no powerful enough box using a 32 bit processor here, so I will not try the :i386 package.

Some more informations about my computer could be of some use for people, so:
$uname -a => Linux deskber 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.35-2 x86_64 GNU/Linux
I am using sid, without desktop environment (but a xorg server, I'm not entirely mad ), and this computer already have various development libraries.
Using nouveau, on a dual screen configuration.

I will post an update with experimental repo added and an upgraded system in few minutes.

freem wrote: 2) openmw's engine is not a non-free software for debian. It should be in contrib, as its only real dependency outside "main" is the nvidia toolkit. If it was removed, and I think it can be set as "recommended" (not sure), it could be in "main". The only thing which should be in contrib would be a script to detect Elder Scroll 3 's data, which is a non-free stuff. I think I have read about people wanting to build total conversion, and I have also read somewhere here that people were planning to create a demo, so removing that nvidia dependency could allow to send openmw in the "main" section.

No true, openmw is no longer dependant on nvidia-cg-toolkit, if you have it, great if not, not a problem thanks to shiny. In all honesty, nvidia-cg-toolkit can go take a hike (no longer supported).

freem wrote: 3) openmw-launcher binary have a weird name: omwlauncher. Since I run my applications from terminals or dmenu, renaming it might be a good idea. Not for me, but for other people doing things in the same way than me. If I understand correctly what I can read on debian-user mailing list, my situation is not so uncommon for a debian user. I think a name like "openmw-launcher" would be more easy to guess without a menu.

I agree about this. PVDK & Zini should talk about this.

freem wrote: 4) it could be interesting to create a deb which create a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ containing the line to add in sources.list. I know that trick thanks to opera. I could create such deb file manually if needed, it only takes 5 minutes. But I have no idea about signing stuff, so I can not do that part of the job.

and as related to point 1), maqifrnswa is scott howard who is a member of debian (and through debian, Ubuntu) and is pushing to make sure that openmw and it's dependencies go into the right repos, the end result is not having more apt sources. The repos he made available are only temporary. The only real show stopper is mygui which doesn't exist at all at the moment, but we are working on that, the rest are in staging for after Wheezy's release.

BrotherBrick wrote: No true, openmw is no longer dependant on nvidia-cg-toolkit, if you have it, great if not, not a problem thanks to shiny. In all honesty, nvidia-cg-toolkit can go take a hike (no longer supported).

Good to know, we should move that dependency from "Depends" to "Recommends". However, I think the openmw package will still be end up in "contrib". To be in "main" it needs to be fully functional with pacages only in debian. Since there is no morrowind content in debian, the package has to use external morrowind content in order to function.

http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html wrote: The contrib archive area contains supplemental packages intended to work with the Debian distribution, but which require software outside of the distribution to either build or function.

If there was any Open Morrowind content (there doesn't exist any at this time), we could put it in main.

BrotherBrick wrote:

freem wrote: 4) it could be interesting to create a deb which create a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ containing the line to add in sources.list. I know that trick thanks to opera. I could create such deb file manually if needed, it only takes 5 minutes. But I have no idea about signing stuff, so I can not do that part of the job.

and as related to point 1), maqifrnswa is scott howard who is a member of debian (and through debian, Ubuntu) and is pushing to make sure that openmw and it's dependencies go into the right repos, the end result is not having more apt sources. The repos he made available are only temporary. The only real show stopper is mygui which doesn't exist at all at the moment, but we are working on that, the rest are in staging for after Wheezy's release.

mygui is now pending too. The problem is that mygui won't link with libogre 1.8 for a little while longer (i.e. after Wheezy, at least).
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=578690

maqifrnswa wrote:Good to know, we should move that dependency from "Depends" to "Recommends". However, I think the openmw package will still be end up in "contrib". To be in "main" it needs to be fully functional with pacages only in debian. Since there is no morrowind content in debian, the package has to use external morrowind content in order to function.

http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html wrote: The contrib archive area contains supplemental packages intended to work with the Debian distribution, but which require software outside of the distribution to either build or function.

If there was any Open Morrowind content (there doesn't exist any at this time), we could put it in main.

Heads up then, because hircine and greendogo have been working on the openmw-example-suite which will allow people to "play" OpenMW without Morrowind being installed. It is still being worked on of course, but all the assets should be GPL. The idea is to have OpenMW be usable "out of the box" with or without Morrowind.

BrotherBrick wrote: Heads up then, because hircine and greendogo have been working on the openmw-example-suite which will allow people to "play" OpenMW without Morrowind being installed. It is still being worked on of course, but all the assets should be GPL. The idea is to have OpenMW be usable "out of the box" with or without Morrowind.

Wow, that's a lot of work - pretty cool. That would allow it to be in main. The free "Doom" games do the same thing: some GPL content with the GPL engine and you have the option of installing your own purchased content.