BBCSDL doesn't work in Debian 9 (stable): "Could not initialize UDEV"

[p_m21987]

Hello,

I've been using BBCSDL on my other computer with Debian 8 (oldstable) and it works there.
But I've found that it doesn't work on two other computers running Debian 9 (the current stable release of Debian).
I get this error message: "Could not initialize UDEV".
I've tried searching for this error message on google, I can't find any useful information about what causes this error or what it means.

Do you have any ideas about what might be wrong?

[p_m21987]

Hello again,
It seems like I've worked out what was wrong, almost as soon as having posted the thread.

I did another google search and found this, relating to some other software that uses SDL: https://www.gog.com/forum/la_mulana/bla ... at_startup

That gave me an idea: I tried installing this package:

Code: Select all

libudev1:i386

and then BBCSDL started working.
So it seems that it's necessary to install libudev1:i386 in addition to the other dependencies listed in 'install.txt' to get BBCSDL to work on the current stable release of Debian (Debian 9).

[guest]

Do you have any ideas about what might be wrong?

This is really a question for an SDL and/or Linux specialist (I an neither!) but I think UDEV has to do with joystick input so it might suggest that a driver is missing or not correctly configured or something. If you attach a joystick to that particular machine, does it work in any other programs? Have you tried installing or updating libudev?

The advantage of SDL is that, mercifully, it isolates me from the peculiarities of machines and operating systems that I neither know about nor want to know about! The disadvantage is that if something doesn't work, I usually won't be able to help.

Richard.

[guest]

So it seems that it's necessary to install libudev1:i386 in addition to the other dependencies

As I've said before, if anybody wants to submit installation instructions for flavours of Linux not currently included in install.txt (i.e. 32-bit Linux Mint, 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu) I would be very happy to incorporate them in future releases of that file for the benefit of others. Somebody else recently reported having problems installing on 64-bit Linux Mint so I'd value instructions for that, as well as the Debian you are running.

Richard.

[p_m21987]

As I've said before, if anybody wants to submit installation instructions for flavours of Linux not currently included in install.txt (i.e. 32-bit Linux Mint, 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu) I would be very happy to incorporate them in future releases of that file for the benefit of others. Somebody else recently reported having problems installing on 64-bit Linux Mint so I'd value instructions for that, as well as the Debian you are running.

Here's what I had to do to get BBCSDL working on my Debian 9 system, which you could add to the next version of 'install.txt'

Code: Select all

64-bit Debian stable:

su
dpkg --add-architecture i386
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get install libglapi-mesa:i386
apt-get install libegl1-mesa:i386 libegl1-mesa-drivers:i386
apt-get install libgl1-mesa-glx:i386
apt-get install libsdl2-2.0-0:i386
apt-get install libsdl2-ttf-2.0-0:i386
apt-get install libsdl2-net-2.0-0:i386
apt-get install libudev1:i386
exit

[guest]

Here's what I had to do to get BBCSDL working on my Debian 9 system, which you could add to the next version of 'install.txt'

Will do, thanks. Out of interest, what version of SDL did you get from the Debian repo ('about.bbc' will tell you)?

Richard.

[p_m21987]

Here's what about.bbc says:

2018-04-19-212153_640x480_scrot.png

SDL 2.0.5
SDL2_net 2.0.1
SDL2_ttf 2.0.14
FreeType 2.6.3

[guest]

SDL 2.0.5

Good - 2.0.5 seems to be quite stable. I've had problems with later versions (the current release is 2.0.8) on some platforms.

Richard.

[p_m21987]

Out of interest, what sorts of problems did you have?

[guest]

Out of interest, what sorts of problems did you have?

2.0.6 broke the Windows edition (principally sound faults, caused I believe by switching from using Direct Sound to a different sound API).

2.0.8 broke the iOS edition (single-touch gestures being interpreted as multi-touch gestures, causing almost any attempt to use the touch screen to be interpreted as a pan/zoom). Also 2.0.8 has a dependency on Apple's Metal Framework which I'm not keen on.

I've not even dared try anything later than 2.0.5 on Android, because there have been so many reports of problems at the SDL forum.

Basically I'm waiting for SDL 2 to stabilise. For a long time they released a new version about every two years, and only after extensive testing. Then it all went wrong: for reasons that I don't understand they released 2.0.6 prematurely (in my judgement) and that was followed in quick order by 2.0.7 and 2.0.8 as they scrambled to fix the problems - all the while describing the latest release as "stable" which is definitely wasn't.

It seems to have settled down a little now, but I don't know whether 2.0.8 is stable enough to risk (on platforms other than iOS) and unless there's a known issue with 2.0.5 which forces me to 'upgrade' there's not really any incentive to do so. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Richard.