[markus_GE]

The Topic#s Name says it all (Forget about the typo in it, please...): I´m wondering what has happened to the experimental Releases published regularly on saturday every week...

It may seem I´m a bit impatient - I´m not intending to do so and can wait for it, yet I would like to know when I´d better check the Downloads page again :oldstry: - just as not to miss throw away any time for testing an activity I recently had Problems on with paths and AIs

Cheers, Markus

[eric from trainsim]

If you install Tortoise SVN, you don't need to wait for the experimentals -- you can get the current developer build as frequently as you wish.

[cjakeman]

Hi Markus,

markus_GE, on 26 May 2013 - 05:19 AM, said:

The Topic's Name says it all (Forget about the typo in it, please...): I´m wondering what has happened to the experimental Releases published regularly on Saturday every week...

Thanks for the reminder. I'm doing this now and somehow I forgot it this time.

It's in place now,

[James Ross]

cjakeman, on 26 May 2013 - 07:44 AM, said:

Thanks for the reminder. I'm doing this now and somehow I forgot it this time.

I wonder if I could automate this... mind listing out the steps you take to produce the experimental download?

[gpz]

It would be nice to have some infrastructure to automatically make nightly builds. It would eliminate the need (is there?) for committing exe files to svn. What if a developer has computer infected by a virus?

[cjakeman]

Hi James,

James Ross, on 26 May 2013 - 08:08 AM, said:

I wonder if I could automate this... mind listing out the steps you take to produce the experimental download?

Be great if you could. This is what I have started doing.

1. Checkout the latest version from SVN.
2. Prepare executable zip by compressing folder Program and renaming to OR_X.zip
3. Prepare source zip by compressing folder Source and renaming to OR_X_source.zip
4. Using Dreamweaver, update experimental.html by changing date and release number for the two links:

May 26, 2013 - Download executable binaries for Experimental Release X.1615
May 26, 2013 - Download of source files for Experimental Release X.1615

5. Insert copies of version comments, e.g.:
r1615 Bug 1182052 - fix for Steam locomotives which are flipped in the consist (also applies to reversal points). <br><br>
(Tags really ought to be <li></li>)
6. Upload the 3 files.
7. Possibly announce on Elvas Tower > RAILROAD SIMULATIONS > Open Rails Development > Releases > Progress Reports

[James Ross]

gpz, on 26 May 2013 - 09:44 AM, said:

It would be nice to have some infrastructure to automatically make nightly builds.

Yeah, it would; currently, though, it's less simple than it should be because the XNA Content Pipeline (which compiles the shaders and other graphics we ship in to native formats) requires access to a GPU during the build. This means, even on a local desktop computer, it won't build from a service unless specially configured to have access to the user's desktop.

I'm not very familiar with the GPU status with hosted VMs/IaaS solutions, but I believe getting one with a GPU (or vGPU) is more expensive than without. Certainly worth investigating, even though none of it would be free. :furiousPC:

cjakeman, on 26 May 2013 - 10:41 AM, said:

Be great if you could. This is what I have started doing.

Thanks, that looks quite automatable relative to actually building Open Rails.

[James Ross]

James Ross, on 26 May 2013 - 12:38 PM, said:

Yeah, it would; currently, though, it's less simple than it should be because the XNA Content Pipeline (which compiles the shaders and other graphics we ship in to native formats) requires access to a GPU during the build. This means, even on a local desktop computer, it won't build from a service unless specially configured to have access to the user's desktop.

As of X.1733 (2nd Sep) the XNA Content Pipeline is gone, and as of Saturday morning I have automated builds working on my Jenkins installation at home, and as of just now they are publically available on my site (this is all versions from X.1733 onwards).

This is just the beginning - I plan to document exactly how it is set up in Jenkins and to get the builds on to the website.

There are some important differences between these builds are the ones people usually run from Subversion: they're code-signed (with my certificate), they are release builds and they include debugging information (which means stack traces should have source lines).

[markus_GE]

Will These Auto builds now replace the weekly X Releases, or will These be also automatized or how are you going to go on with that? Just to know how important the new Bookmark will grow ;)

Cheers, Markus

[James Ross]

markus_GE, on 23 September 2013 - 05:46 AM, said:

Will These Auto builds now replace the weekly X Releases, or will These be also automatized or how are you going to go on with that? Just to know how important the new Bookmark will grow ;)

I hope to connect this process and thus automate the experimental releases. They will still be available every week (unless we choose to skip one for any reason) and will still be downloadable from the openrails.org website. The only difference you should notice is that Chris no longer has to make them by hand each week. :)

But I also hope that by building every version automatically (not just the weekly releases), we can actually stop including the "Program" folder in Subversion itself. This wont be an overnight change, and will require some careful thoughts on making sure it is still easy for people to get the absolute latest version as they currently do from Subversion. These will also be available from openrails.org, when it happens.

We should also decide what we'd like to make publically available in terms of release/debug builds and source-line data or not.