SDL 3.1.3 Stable ABI Preview Release

[phoronix]

Phoronix: SDL 3.1.3 Stable ABI Preview Release

Sam Lantinga released SDL 3.1.3 on Friday as their "stable ABI preview" version ahead of the SDL 3.2.0 stable release. The developer at Valve notes that SDL3 has already been "battle tested by millions of people in DOTA, CS2 and Steam" and they are now gearing up for the SDL 3.2 stable release to get SDL3 out to the masses...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/SDL-3.1.3-Released

[user1]

The developer at Valve notes that SDL3 has already been "battle tested by millions of people in DOTA, CS2 and Steam"

Does that mean the Steam Linux client itself already runs on top of SDL3? If yes then I hope the client would start running natively on Wayland when it will become the default in SDL3.

[Chewi]

I consider making it 64-bit to be much more important at this point.

[user1]

I consider making it 64-bit to be much more important at this point.

While it'll also be nice, it would be a less noticeable improvement compared to native Wayland. And you still need all the 32 bit dependencies for older native Linux games and for Proton to run 32 bit Windows games (although WOW64 mode is now complete in Wine 9.0, it's probably still not mature enough to be used in Proton).

[Chewi]

Once certificates (e.g. HTTPS) expiry dates start reaching beyond 2038, things will start failing horribly. Long expiry dates on root certificates are not uncommon. This probably won't affect games, but it will certainly affect Steam itself.

[wertigon]

I feel like Wayland and 64 bit Linux are two incredibly important steps to take for Steam.

Wayland is less important; Steam works great in XWayland. Still, Steam should be moved over there eventually.

As for x86-32 code, with modern hardware, hypervisor and VMs, it feels like we should be able to use 32 bit VMs and leave 32 bit code behind. It just feels so stupid to install a ton of 386 libraries just because Steam requires it for their runtime.

Old games should be able to run in a 32 bit VMs with no significant performance losses, newer games a pass through scheme might be required. Or better yet a low overhead virtual machine language talking to the GPU somehow.

[GunpowderGuy]

Will the 3d api be more in line with wgpu or a library i can directly start making games with ? could somebody share me up to date documentation, i can only find outdate one

[nanonyme]

While it'll also be nice, it would be a less noticeable improvement compared to native Wayland. And you still need all the 32 bit dependencies for older native Linux games and for Proton to run 32 bit Windows games (although WOW64 mode is now complete in Wine 9.0, it's probably still not mature enough to be used in Proton).

Yeah, it's not as if the hard deadline for Steam to be 64bit is that soon. It only has to happen before 2038 when i686 clock breaks in a way that is unfixable without major ABI break. Well, distros might start removing 32bit support from kernels before that, I guess.

[Weasel]

Once certificates (e.g. HTTPS) expiry dates start reaching beyond 2038, things will start failing horribly. Long expiry dates on root certificates are not uncommon. This probably won't affect games, but it will certainly affect Steam itself.

You can use 64-bit integers in 32-bit apps.................

[Chewi]

You can use 64-bit integers in 32-bit apps.................

It's not that simple. 32-bit x86 binaries on Linux is built around a 32-bit time_t. Some distros are trying to deal with that by switching to 64-bit, but it breaks compatibility all over the place. It generally requires everything to be rebuilt. See this very recent blog post.