Fedora 42 Eyes Replacing SDL2 With sdl2-compat To Leverage SDL3

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora 42 Eyes Replacing SDL2 With sdl2-compat To Leverage SDL3

The SDL2 library is widely used by cross-platform games and other software. Fedora 42 is eyeing the possibility of replacing SDL2 with the sdl2-compat code so that by way of this compatibility layer the newer SDL3 version will ultimately be used instead...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-42-sdl2-compat-Propose

[cend]

When SDL5 releases we may have to witness a terribly performing dependency chain...

Eventually statically linking all further compatibility layers into sdl12-compat and turning on link-time optimization would become the preferrable option to extract performance on old games.

[Jumbotron]

What’s the story with Ubuntu ? I don’t recall seeing their stance recently on this matter.

[King InuYasha]

When SDL5 releases we may have to witness a terribly performing dependency chain...

Eventually statically linking all further compatibility layers into sdl12-compat and turning on link-time optimization would become the preferrable option to extract performance on old games.

It doesn't work that way. The compatibility libraries use dlopen() to avoid symbol conflicts.

[user1]

Honestly, this is a really dumb idea. It's another story if we talk about SDL 1.2, which saw its last release many years ago, but SDL 2? While it may not receive new features anymore, its development still hasn't ended and it receives bug fixes. If you look at their milestone page on Github, you'll see that they still plan to release SDL 2.32 and maybe even 2.34. I don't understand how the user will currently benefit from the switch to sdl2-compat. The latest versions of SDL2 work perfectly, even with SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland. If anything, the switch to sdl2-compat will probably lead to a more buggy experience, first because it was in development for just 2 years and second, because SDL3 hasn't even had its first official stable release yet. Just look at sdl1.2-compat. It has been in development for much longer, and it still doesn't run all SDL 1.2 games flawlessly like native SDL 1.2.

This is yet another example why I left Fedora (even though my initial impressions of it were good). They sometimes seem to push new tech even when it's clearly not ready. Another examples are systemd-resolved, which for still unknown reason randomly stops resolving DNS, and tuneD which seems to be more buggy than power-profiles-daemon and uses more CPU since it's entirely written in Python unlike PPD.

I mean don't get me wrong, I still think Fedora is a very good distro, but I just disagree with some of their decision making.

[StarterX4]

2040 be like: Old games running through sdl12-compat through sdl2-compat through sdl3-compat through ... ... though at least they use SDL6 😅

[skeevy420]

Honestly, this is a really dumb idea. It's another story if we talk about SDL 1.2, which saw its last release many years ago, but SDL 2? While it may not receive new features anymore, its development still hasn't ended and it receives bug fixes. If you look at their milestone page on Github, you'll see that they still plan to release SDL 2.32 and maybe even 2.34. I don't understand how the user will currently benefit from the switch to sdl2-compat. The latest versions of SDL2 currently work perfectly, even with SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland. If anything, the switch to sdl2-compat will probably lead to more bugs, first because it was in development for just 2 years and second, because SDL3 hasn't even had its first official stable release.

This is yet another example why I left Fedora (even though my initial impressions of it were good). They sometimes seem to push new tech even when it's clearly not ready. Another examples are systemd-resolved, which for still unknown reason randomly stops resolving DNS, and tuneD which seems to be more buggy than power-profiles-daemon and uses more CPU since it's entirely written in Python unlike PPD.

I mean don't get me wrong, I still think Fedora is a very good distro, but I just disagree with some of its decision making.

From what I can tell, they've been keeping sdl2-compat relatively up to date with SDL2. It looks like their endgame is to "pull a Vulkan" or "pull a Wayland" with SDL using SDL3 and sdl*-compat...Move everything to SDL3+compat and be able to drop legacy cruft.

Yeah, Fedora is a rolling test platform. Pushing things forward and seeing what breaks is what Fedora does. It can suck when you're the kind of person that updates for the sake of updating. That's also why Fedora supports their versions for an extra six months (IIRC) and why you shouldn't necessarily upgrade from A to B right away or ever. Perhaps just skip right over to C when it comes out.

[caligula]

2040 be like: Old games running through sdl12-compat through sdl2-compat through sdl3-compat through ... ... though at least they use SDL6 😅

I remember when I started doing game programming with allegro in the 1990s. Soon after switched to SDL 1.2, then SDL 1.3 in 2005 or so. SDL 1.3 is basically SDL 2.0. it's surprising there are still games using this 20+ year old code. Small games. Nobody cares about their code base anymore.

[F.Ultra]

2040 be like: Old games running through sdl12-compat through sdl2-compat through sdl3-compat through ... ... though at least they use SDL6 😅

yep but then again you will be able to play your extremely old games by then on the latest hardware and software stack and not only will everything work but those old games can also utilize some of the new benefits. Beats having to create something like Wine but for old Linux versions.

[ahrs]

This is yet another example why I left Fedora (even though my initial impressions of it were good). They sometimes seem to push new tech even when it's clearly not ready. Another examples are systemd-resolved, which for still unknown reason randomly stops resolving DNS, and tuneD which seems to be more buggy than power-profiles-daemon and uses more CPU since it's entirely written in Python unlike PPD.

I mean don't get me wrong, I still think Fedora is a very good distro, but I just disagree with some of their decision making.

To play devils advocate, I would say that these bleeding edge changes are good because it results in more exposure to the software they're using which in turn uncovers bugs and ideally results in them getting fixed and the software improved as a result. Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to keep using Unbound as a stub resolver over systemd-resolved but I think the job Fedora does in moving software forward is invaluable. If they didn't do it, who would?