love-build instructions for LOVE 12.0

love-build-instructions.md

There are few options that support LOVE 12.0 packaging. love-build (https://github.com/ellraiser/love-build) does, but it requires some custom work to make it happen. Here's what you need to know to pull it off.

I'm working on OS X 15.6. There may be platform specificities to this.

1. Download the binaries for love-build, available here: https://github.com/ellraiser/love-build/releases/tag/v0.9
2. Download the love-12 zip files here: https://github.com/ellraiser/love-build/tree/main/src
3. Place the love-12 zip files in SAVE_DIR/love-build/cache/
   1. On OS X, this is ~/Library/Application Support/love-build/cache
   2. I'm not sure on other platforms, but if you try to build a LOVE 12 project WITHOUT these, the app will helpfully open the directory that needs the cached files.
4. Add a build.lua file to the root of your project directory. Follow the README.md instructions from here: https://github.com/ellraiser/love-build
   1. The icon key is required and builds will fail if you don't have a compliant icon.
   2. hooks and libs can be commented out safely
   3. Set love = '12.0'
   4. If you set an output directory like dist you need to premake the directory; love-build will not do this and revert to storing the output in SAVE_DIR/love-build/output/
   5. I have not tested Linux builds.

The love-12 build included in the love-build repo is ~3 months old. That was fine for me. But if there was an important change more recent than that, you'll need to produce the library files yourself. I have never successfully done this. It has something to do with Github double-compressing zip files, and OS X double un-zipping. Notes on this issue are here.