How to Integrate VASSAL into the Linux Desktop

Documentation
11

No, it does not, nor does it need to :slight_smile:

If you follow the recommendations on the Installation instructions - either global System-wide or home Single-user - then the integration.sh script only needs to be run once.

Example

First time installation

Take a global System-wide installation in /opt/vassal

  1. You download - say - VASSAL-3.7.20-linux.tar.bz2
  2. You create the directory /opt/vassal if it doesn’t exist already
    $ mkdir -p vassal
  3. You unpack VASSAL-3.7.20-linux.tar.bz2 to /opt/vassal
    $ tar -xjf VASSAL-3.7.20-linux.tar.bz2 -C /opt/vassal
  4. You make a symbolic link from /opt/vassal/current to VASSAL-3.7.20
    $ cd /opt/vassal
$ ln -s VASSAL-3.7.20 current
  5. You run the integration script
    $ sudo sh current/integration --system -v /opt/vassal/current

Upgrade

When you want to upgrade Vassal, you do

  1. Download VASSAL-3.7.21-linux.tar.bz2
  2. You unpack that to /opt/vassal
    $ tar -xjf VASSAL-3.7.21-linux.tar.bz2 -C /opt/vassal
  3. You make a symbolic link from /opt/vassal/current to VASSAL-3.7.21
    $ cd /opt/vassal 
$ rm -f current
$ ln -s VASSAL-3.7.21 current
``

and voila - you are all set to go.

If you want to change to some other version - say VASSAL-3.6.7, you can simply move the current symbolic link

$ cd /opt/vassal
$ rm -f current
$ ln -s VASSAL-3.6.7 current

and the desktop integration will still work.

Alternative

Alternatively, you can re-run the integration script on every new install:

$ cd /opt/vassal/VASSAL-3.7.21
$ sudo sh integration.sh --remove
$ sudo sh integration.sh --system

Distribution packages

Note, if you use a Debian or RedHat based distribution, you can download a package (the files ending in .deb or .rpm, respectively) which will do everything for you.

Yours,
Christian