I’m going to enter a small game competition in the coming months. They require the submission to be able to be compiled ( and it will be, before being run/evaluated for the contest) on Linux. I’m going to be using SDL and C++. I’ve only ever developed on Windows before and I’ve grown quite accustomed to the benefits Visual Studio gives. I’d like to be able to develop in windows with VS, and then near the end of the process migrate it over to linux. Beside making sure SDL is already installed on the Linux machine, are there things I can do throughout development that will make the process easier? Also, the contest rule for all of this states:
it must also work on an open platform (we strongly recommend making sure that your program run on modern flavors of GNU/Linux, as all of the judges will have access to it).
I assume compiling/running in Ubuntu (already have a home server with this) would be sufficient for this?
Your question is slightly open-ended, but my first suggestion would be to use a proper cross-platform build system such as CMake from day one. I would refrain from “migrating” to Linux at the very end; you may be under a rough schedule (and maybe run into problems you did not anticipate). Thus, a continuous build of (working) Linux versions will help ease your worries.
Furthermore, if the game is meant to run solely under Linux, why not install Ubuntu in a Virtual Machine somewhere and get acquainted with one of the development environments such as kdevelop or qtcreator? Wouldn’t direct contact with the platform you are developing for make things a little easier?