Hi everyone!

I chose SDL2 after hearing wonders about it: multiplatform, handles windowing, multiple monitors (specially on Linux!), input, releasing of input grabbing when debugging, it's backed by Valve, etc, etc.

I'm an Ogre developer and we have our own windowing management code for all platforms; however it's not perfect and it doesn't handle input. From what I've heard SDL2 would be a great replacement in all aspects.

So I believed what I've been told and went ahead. Now I'm quite pissed. This piece of software is buggy as hell on Linux. This is what I've found:

1. Creating a GL context that is not supported (i.e. trying a 4.6 or a 5.0 context) will result in a deadlock when calling SDL_GL_CreateContext (or when making the next X11 function if I create the context myself). The callstack is (sorry for no symbols):

0 __lll_lock_wait 135 0x7ffff5316f2c 
1 _L_lock_909 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 0x7ffff5312657 
2 __GI___pthread_mutex_lock 79 0x7ffff5312480 
3 ?? /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6 0x7ffff5a27973 
4 ?? /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 0x7fffec262406 
5 ?? /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/fglrx_dri.so 0x7fffe706b844 
6 ?? /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 0x7fffec236022 
7 glXDestroyContext /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 0x7fffec23622c 
8 ?? /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libSDL2-2.0.so.0 0x7ffff6e1e931 
9 ?? /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libSDL2-2.0.so.0 0x7ffff6e13710 
10 Demo::GraphicsSystem::initialize GraphicsSystem.cpp 140 0x42906e

Give a heads up to Ryan Gordon? https://twitter.com/icculus

I think it's a little silly to be angry about a product which was provided to you to use for free. I'd understand if you expressed disappointment instead of anger though.

Anyway, no SDL2 is not perfect. Neither is any other piece of software in the wild. Many people rave about it because it's one of the best solutions of it's kind. Since it is free/open source software, you have a few options. You can fix it yourself, wait for it to be fixed by someone else, or find another alternative that hopefully works out better for you. If it was commercial software, you would have fewer options than that (and less money). Just trying to bring some perspective to your situation. I use SDL as well and I have had issues with it similar to yours, but I stuck with it because it was the best alternative out there for us at the time and now it's so entrenched in our code now that to take it out would require a lot of work. I think you should take a look around and compare it with other solutions to see if you have any better luck with them.

Whoa!

Credit is due where credit is due.

Yesterday the maximizing bugs and the GL context creation bug where fixed. Very fast response, that is really satisfying.

I have to try the latest version again now, and see if the other bugs remain after these bugs have been fixed.

I think it's a little silly to be angry about a product which was provided to you to use for free.

I think it's a little silly to be angry about a product which was provided to you to use for free.

Free software isn't above criticism. That you think that you have to pay for something for you to criticize it tells me more about you than about how silly the idea might be.

Of course it isn't. I never said it was. But when I read the original post, I sensed it more anger (it was tagged with [RANT] after all) than criticism. Maybe that was wrong to presume of me though. It's difficult to discern one's emotions over a forum such as this.

Generally, I've found SDL to be a fantastic piece of software.

I think it's a little silly to be angry about a product which was provided to you to use for free.

Free software isn't above criticism. That you think that you have to pay for something for you to criticize it tells me more about you than about how silly the idea might be.

Personally, i believe that rather than criticise open source software the correct cultulral thing to do is contribute and fix the issues. It isn't above criticism but when you have the skill set, time and access to be able to fix it yourself, why not "quit-yer-bitchin' and get coding"? :)

Glad to hear though that the bugs were fixed pretty sharpish, nobody likes to be told their code is bad, and most developers will of course jump on these things but they have to be told about them first, sometimes repeatedly ;)

Roots was correct, my anger was in over excess considering it is free software.

However good part of that anger was fueled by the fact that one major bug (maximizing, resizing and restoring) was not only reported in 2012, but also had multiple patches proposed that were never applied. This made me question the will of the developers to push the sw forward on the Linux platform.

Add that to the other bugs, and my anger went off charts. I mean, a program that hangs if the video drivers aren't really, really up to date (i.e. we first try to create a GL context, if that fails try to do it again with a lower spec) can't be deployed (the amount of bug reports would be too high); which means I would have to seriously reconsider using SDL.

However considering two of those major bugs got fixed (which strongly affect end-user deployment) were fixed within a day after this post, restores my faith on the software; living up to its good reputation.