Creating a cross-platform launcher

[Z-Man]

I don't know about XP but on Windows 7 this works great:

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if(os.startsWith("Win")) {     saveFolder = System.getenv("AppData") + "\" gameName + "\"; }

Oh wow I didn't know there was a 'getenv' method. That's basically doing %APPDATA% which resolves to the correct location for XP, Vista and 7.

Exactly I managed to track down something like this for Linux-based OSes through some googlefu. Unfortunately, I didn't have any luck with OSX. For Linux you'd do something like this:

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if(os.contains("Linux")) // Can someone on a Linux distro test this part? {    saveFolder = System.getenv("XDG_DATA_HOME");    if(saveFolder == null)       saveFolder = System.getProperty("user.home") + "/.local/share";    saveFolder += "/" + gameName + "/"; }

Apparently Linux splits config (options) and data (saves) into two separate locations, i.e. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME and $XDG_DATA_HOME. I'd probably just pick one or the other out of laziness

[ra4king]

For Linux and Mac OS X, the user.home + ".<name>" is all you need.

[Z-Man]

For Linux and Mac OS X, the user.home + ".<name>" is all you need.

The point isn't "all you need", the point is trying to follow the standards for whatever OS your program is running on. You could put your save in C:\Users\ZMan\GameName\player1.sv and call it good, but instead we put it in %AppData%\GameName\player1.sv because it's cleaner and is what is expected on Windows. If you don't care about that then ya, user.home + gameName works just fine. I was just looking for an AppData equivalent on Linux/OSX.

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[Suds]

For Linux and Mac OS X, the user.home + ".<name>" is all you need.

The point isn't "all you need", the point is trying to follow the standards for whatever OS your program is running on. You could put your save in C:\Users\ZMan\GameName\player1.sv and call it good, but instead we put it in %AppData%\GameName\player1.sv because it's cleaner and is what is expected on Windows. If you don't care about that then ya, user.home + gameName works just fine. I was just looking for an AppData equivalent on Linux/OSX.

While we're on the topic of standards, and expected behaviour; there's one that I *hate*.

<rant>

When games/applications put binary data (usually some sort of save file) in the designated documents folder. My Documents on XP, Documents on Vista/7/8, user.home/Documents on linux. And you can't even relocate the data half the time without breaking the associated app. Its a super irritating habit that too many devs have. Thats what the %appdata% folder is *for* !!!

</rant>

[Damocles]

for cross platform applications, always determine the file-seperator!

1	String fileSeperator = System.getProperty("file.separator");

dont just use " / " or " \" thingies for pathnames.

[gouessej]

I don't know about XP but on Windows 7 this works great:

1   2   3

if(os.startsWith("Win")) {     saveFolder = System.getenv("AppData") + "\" gameName + "\"; }

Oh wow I didn't know there was a 'getenv' method. That's basically doing %APPDATA% which resolves to the correct location for XP, Vista and 7.

Exactly I managed to track down something like this for Linux-based OSes through some googlefu. Unfortunately, I didn't have any luck with OSX. For Linux you'd do something like this:

1   2   3   4   5   6   7

if(os.contains("Linux")) // Can someone on a Linux distro test this part? {    saveFolder = System.getenv("XDG_DATA_HOME");    if(saveFolder == null)       saveFolder = System.getProperty("user.home") + "/.local/share";    saveFolder += "/" + gameName + "/"; }

Apparently Linux splits config (options) and data (saves) into two separate locations, i.e. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME and $XDG_DATA_HOME. I'd probably just pick one or the other out of laziness

XDG_DATA_HOME and XDG_CONFIG_HOME are not correctly defined on all Linux distros, it depends on the window manager.

[Suds]

for cross platform applications, always determine the file-seperator!

1	String fileSeperator = System.getProperty("file.separator");

dont just use " / " or " \" thingies for pathnames.

Ooooh, thats a great little tidbit!

[sproingie]

Forward slash works as a separator on every single interesting platform that Java runs on, including every version of windows.  You only need the separator if you're generating names that will go into a .bat file or sent to explorer.exe or something else that deliberately doesn't understand forward slashes.

[Cero]

Forward slash works as a separator on every single interesting platform that Java runs on, including every version of windows.  You only need the separator if you're generating names that will go into a .bat file or sent to explorer.exe or something else that deliberately doesn't understand forward slashes.

yeah System.getProperty("file.separator") is pretty useless, I always just use /

[loom_weaver]

or use File.separator

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[noblemaster]

It's under ~/.config/<package-name> on Ubuntu.

Ubuntu App Developer Guide:
http://developer.ubuntu.com/publish/my-apps-packages/

[ra4king]

Yeah, there's no point in using File.separator or that getProperty one, just use forward slash everything.