See:
https://pagure.io/fedora-comps/issue/492
When installing the games group with
dnf in @games, nothing is listed. Only when--with-optionalis added. And then the following games are not included in Fedora anymore (see below). Could you please update this? Thanks!
That group has quite a few packages from rpmfusion-free and rpmfusion-nonfree, should they still be included there ?
Are you looking with DNF? DNF will merge the comps file from multiple repos. The contents of Tree - fedora-comps - Pagure.io is all we can control.
What games group supposed to be? Gaming tools (lutris, minigalaxy, wine…) or games themselves?
Can we maybe get two groups like games and gamers-tools ?
and maybe also game-devel?
Ok, so let’s say we have:
games - 0ad, openttd, wesnoth, widelands, minetest, …games-tools: lutris minigalaxy scummvm playonlinux …games-devel: pyGame, godot …I think dnf search game provides a good initial input for these lists. It needs some review and filtering but it is quite large and covers a lot.
The remaining question is about types of entries in the comps files.
I see that there are default, mandatory and optional thinks and then there are also conditionals.
Conditionalized games could be gnome-* for Gnome-like Desktops, k* games for KDE and sugar-* for Sugar desktop.
But I don’t understand the difference between default and mandatory.
When I do dnf groupinstall @games can I choose between defaults, mandatory and optional, or is it always all of them?
This is from the very olden days, when the installer presented a list of groups, and you could actually go in the groups and pick individual packages. Packages marked “mandatory” were always installed when the group was selected and there was no way to deselect them without deselecting the whole group. Packages marked “default” were selected when you selected the group but you could go in and unselect them. Packages marked “optional” were the opposite, not selected by default but available to select when you went in to see.
I don’t know if any of the package tools expose things like this anymore. I think it probably makes most sense at this point to just put things as “default” or nothing
I didn’t know Fedora had this as an option. Personally I’d get rid of it rather fix it. It sounds like a feature from when I installed from discs. It’s the “I want to install everything”. I can’t think of someone who would use that. I suppose maybe a user with unlimited network bandwith but only for a limited time. They could install everything and evaluate when not connected. But I don’t imagine that is very many people. (Should we not include network games if that is the primary user?)
If I’ve decided to go into game development but don’t know where to begin. I install this games-devel group hoping to evaluate what to use. How can I evaluate the tools that are vastly different? pygame and godot are not interchangeble. It gets even worse if you go down to SDL2 and SFML. Flare and various doom derivatives are a game engines that can used to develop games as well. That could also include Open Surge and Bt Builder. Those later two are probably too niche to be included but even just pygame, godot, SDL2, and SFML gives such a wide range that I don’t see it being useful.
I can kinda see the usefulness of grouping games-tools together but I doubt many people would install them all to try them all out.
The games group is probably the most useful but potentially harder to define. If it includes the best of open source games, it could be good for a newcomer wanting to see what is available. I’m just not sure what should be in it. Minetest is a great base but the default game is lacking content. You need to install mods to get the best experience.
@dulsi I don’t think I would ever use it as “install everything from this group” option.
But it might be helpful for discovery with something like dnf groupinfo games.
I think it would be nice to have these lists maintained in general, maybe in some separate repository even and then there could be several applications of them:
And in the groupinfo we still have packages listed by categories: required vs optional, so we can maintain some smaller opinionated list of recommended games and tools and frameworks in the required part.
Wow, that brings back 
memories!
I think that developers of games would be able to decide which tools suited their needs better than a group that covers all. But from a packager maintenance POV it may be practical to do.
I think this is a good place to start though, wouldn’t a Fedora curated set of mods that make it usable be a good choice in this particular example?
I don’t mind updating the comps group for games, but there are a few question I have.
I have already forked the repo on Pagure to my Pagure account and cloned it to my PC. I was running through the list of optional games to verify DNF is aware of them, so far all the games beginning with ‘a’ are in Fedora repo. But I still notice the group is not all games, there are game dev patforms, joystick tools, IDE for game dev, etc… Is the intent to ad groups around games then re-organize the packages into the appropriate groups , games/game-dev/game-utils? I don’t mind taking the time to clean this up, it is just some housekeeping and a good entry level task for someone like me who wants to do more for the project.
I game, mostly in console games, but also on my Fedora box in the past. I would like to be able to get this moved forward if someone (game-sig?) would make a suggestion here.
Well, long ago when comps was created, the intent was to provide groups
with all of the things in that area, then people could select it in the
installer and choose the ones they wanted. That is long since no longer
the case.
I’m not sure a massive group like ‘games’ makes too much sense these
days. Perhaps smaller groups would make sense, like ‘strategy games’ and
‘board games’, etc? But even then, I suspect many people just use
gnome-software and search for things there instead of using dnf group
list or the like.
I guess my age shows, since I still use the group option of dnf. I agree that the group is very large and somewhat subjective. What I was thinking after I looked at it was maybe something like …
But it may be something that is best left, and make effort in some other area that could help gaming indirectly.
Having said all that though, does there need to be some effort in comps in general that you think I can help with?
I guess my age shows, since I still use the group option of dnf. I agree that the group is very large and somewhat subjective. What I was thinking after I looked at it was maybe something like …
- Core Gaming Needs group - Includes things needed to get hardware working such as joysticks etc…
- Steam Gaming Needs group - Everything needed to run Steam on Fedora
That should be deps on the steam rpm no?
- Open Source Gaming Platform group - Alternative open source platforms that provide Steam like services but are FOSS.
Groups like that is what I was thinking of, but not sure how useful
people would find them.
But it may be something that is best left, and make effort in some other area that could help gaming indirectly.
Having said all that though, does there need to be some effort in comps in general that you think I can help with?
There’s a bunch of old issues someone could go through and see if they
can just be closed or fixed somehow:
https://pagure.io/fedora-comps/issues
There’s likely a ton of groups that aren’t used anymore or need
updating…
kevin
So is comps still used? or is it something Fedora Project is contemplating moving from? Or is it just there seems to be little work going on the issues, so there are likely no one taking these issues on for lack of resources?
dnfdragora exposes the groups visually, as does simple-dnf, I think?
So they are being used by the project and should be maintained.
I will start tackling some of the older issues and work my way towards the game grouping then. @kevin I will probably bug you at times, though the files seem pretty straight forward at first glance.
Please do, happy to help and thanks for looking at it!
Hello @kevin and @ngompa ,
What is the state of Issues #204 and #205? It appears when looking at commits there have been commits related to the kde groups that are way more recent than the 3 years ago that the last comment was made on either of these specific issues. So who should I coordinate with on this? The KDE SiG? If so, who is the primary contact. I would prefer to work in the direction the KDE SiG and community is headed.