OGRE_BITES_HAVE_SDL flag set to 0, which disables basic Input / Ouput Functionality

[Stu S]

It appears the OGRE_BITES_HAVE_SDL compilation flag is set to zero when this package was compiled.

I think it makes more sense to set it to 1, and make SDL a dependency of libOgre on ubuntu (And, see below, I *think* the maintainer of ogre agrees with me, hopefully I didn't put words in their mouth!):

- if you're using OGRE, it seems unlikely that you're running on a headless machine.

- if you're not running on a headless machine, I believe SDL2 is usually automatically installed (it was for me).

- the OGRE tutorials assume you're running the library with SDL enabled - since it's a compilation flag, it can be non-trivial to track down the issues that result when trying to follow the tutorial - namely, the input listeners silently fail, since they're never called, since SDL isn't present.

- It's true that, if I play devil's advocate, you could argue that the Ogre package should expose a header file that you can extend and use SDL with, or have some other method of enabling SDL integration without recompiling the library. However, the overhead of providing an SDL-enabled package seems quite small, and since the reasonable option to enable Input / Output with a program using Ogre without this enabled is to "compile ogre from source" - IOW, don't use the package, well, it seems that enabling this in the package may be the best course of action.

A brief discussion on the OGRE forums with the ogre maintainer:

https://forums.ogre3d.org/viewtopic.php?p=549964#p549964

My package information (yes, I'm using PopOS, but I believe is an ubuntu package, so... well, hopefully that doesn't turn you folks off to a reasonable solution. I did purchase my System76 computer just recently, so I am putting some money into the ecosystem!)

If I should be reporting this to System76 instead, just let me know, but this seemed like the best place to start!

root@pop-os:/home/stu# apt search libOgre
Sorting... Done
Full Text Search... Done
libogre-1.12/focal,now 1.12.4+dfsg1-4 amd64 [installed,automatic]
  3D Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine (libraries)

libogre-1.12-dev/focal,now 1.12.4+dfsg1-4 amd64 [installed]
  3D Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine (development files)

Thanks!

[Olek Wojnar (olekw)]

Stu, it sounds like what you're suggesting would be best-implemented upstream in the Debian packaging. I just subscribed the Debian packager for additional perspective.

[simonschmeisser (s-schmeisser)]

unfortunately a somewhat unfinished/rough version of the ogre packaging ended up in Ubuntu 20.04. Please use my PPA for 20.04 or compile from source. For newer releases of Ubuntu the sdl feature is already enabled as they sync a newer version from Debian. Most packages are maintained as Debian (unstable) package and then frozen into various distributions at various times. Distributions here includes Debian stable releases, Ubuntu, PopOs, ........

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ogre-1.12 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]