Hi,
I just sent the following developer-oriented email to the -dev list, but
as this might also be interesting to some of the users who don't follow
the -dev list (are there any? :), I'm forwarding the message here also.
jj
------- Forwarded message -------
From: "Jukka Jylänki" <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Cc:
Subject: [realXtend-dev] Automated Tundra nightly builds for Windows.
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:30:48 +0300
Hello,
LudoCraft developers are using an automated mechanism for distributing
new Tundra builds to their artists every day. We thought that this
mechanism might interest others as well, so we have now set up a web
server that is publicly available for the nightly builds of the
LudoCraft/Tundra branch. The builds can be browsed and downloaded from here
http://tundra.ludocraft.com/builds/nightly/
This is the mechanism our artists are using internally, so with the
nightlies, you have the opportunity to be in sync and use the exact same
tool than LudoCraft people do every day.
Each build is accompanied with a BuildOutput.txt that logs the build
process, and a WhatsNew.txt, which lists the commits that went into that
build. There is also a _pdb folder for each build, which contains the
symbol files that were created for that build, so if you are a programmer,
you can use those to decipher the call stacks of the .dmp files generated
by Tundra.
The builds do not follow the usual Tundra versioning, but they simply have
a version code of form YYYYMMDD, so you know which nightly you are
running. The nightly should always be installed in the default folder in
program files, because the automated update script expects it.
To set up your system for easy reinstall of the latest nightly, do the
following:
1. Install wget for windows, from
http://tundra.ludocraft.com/builds/nightly/installer/wget-1.11.4-1-setup.exe
. Set the installation path to the default folder.
2. Download
http://tundra.ludocraft.com/builds/nightly/installer/nightly_reinstall.bat
and place it in a folder where you have write access, e.g. your desktop.
Then, whenever you want to reinstall a new nightly, just double-click the
nightly_reinstall.bat file. It will perform an unattended uninstall of the
previous nightly, if there was one, and download the newest nightly and
install it (in attended mode). If your current version is up-to-date, and
there is no newer nightly available, it will not try to reinstall the same
version.
If you want to schedule the reinstall to occur automatically every night
without user intervention, like our artists do, download
http://tundra.ludocraft.com/builds/nightly/installer/nightly_reinstall_unattended.bat
and use e.g. windows system scheduler to run it every day. The new build
is produced on the server at 02:00 AM GMT+2, so to be safe, set the
scheduled run to occur at, say, 03:00 (GMT+2). To actually work through
the complete installation as unattended, the
nightly_reinstall_unattended.bat needs to be run under administrative
privileges, or alternatively, UAC needs to be disabled.
Nightly builds contain the new commits immediately the day after they have
been committed to the repository. So bear in mind that any given time, THE
NIGHTLIES CAN BE WILDLY BROKEN, if a new commit did something bad (and
they often do!). However, if you want to follow the development very close
on a day-to-day basis, but do not want to bother with the compiling
yourself, then the nightlies are meant exactly for you.
From a developer viewpoint, because we store the .pdbs for each nightly,
we are better able to take in and handle those .dmp files you might get
when Tundra crashes, so if you are using the nightlies and get a crash,
please do send them to us, or add them in the issue tracker, and we will
have a look. Or if you have Visual Studio and the code, you can download
the .pdbs and take a peek inside the .dmp yourself as well.
It's a new release for everyone, every day!
jj
--
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http://www.realxtend.org
