Re: [Ekiga-devel-list] Win32 build and continuous integration

[Damien Sandras <dsandras seconix com>]

Le lundi 31 mars 2008 à 21:54 +0200, Torsten Schlabach a écrit :
> Hi!
> 
> Damien Sandras schrieb:
> All I would like to see is a concise guide like:
> >>
> >>- Take a plain XYZ machine.
> >>- Install a, b and c.
> >>- Issues these commands.
> >>- Enjoy.
> > 
> > 
> > There is a start in the wiki, but it is probably not complete enough :(
> 
> IMO the problem with any guide is assumptions. Anyone who's writing such 
> guides silently assumes that the reader will work in a similar 
> environment, will have similar tools installed and will approach tasks 
> in a similar way.

Well, he can not guess the behavior with a different environment either.
For example, I have no idea how it works with Fedora.

> The more skilled someone is in writing guides, the more the writer will 
> think with the reader and make such assumptions explicit. That will at 
> least provide the reader with heads-up if something is different on his 
> system than what the writer assumes.
> 
> But on the other hand, IMO, it cannot be the answer to have detailled 
> guides for any flavor of Linux how to cross-compile Ekiga. That would 
> just be the next maintainance nightmare. If we keep guides for Debian, 
> Ubuntu, Red Hat and SuSE and Gentoo (apologies if I missed your favorite 
> distro) and we'd have a change like the SVN -> git move of x264 we would 
> need to update 5 different guides.

Indeed.

> So what I wonder is if there aren't any more intelligent mechanisms to 
> handle such a cross-build and make it more robust across different 
> distributions or at least make dependencies and potential problems which 
> they cause a bit more transparent. I mean, is Ekiga the first 
> cross-platform open source project? How do other people (Mozilla, eMule, 
> [your favorite cross-platform OSS app]) handle this?

No idea, but of course, Ekiga cross-compilation can certainly be
improved. It is a work in progress and relatively recent, the more
people will try it, and fix it, the better it will be...

> Besides that, what I would like to understand:
> 
> What would it take to get an automated daily snapshot build of Ekiga 
> back? Why isn't it available anymore? Is that just because it stopped 
> working, therefore someone switched it off or did the infrastructure for 
> that snapshot build disappear?

The infrastructure is still present, but the person owning it does not
have spare time anymore. We have no news from him since 6 months (except
on rare occasions).

Most probably the scripts simply need to be fixed.

It would be cool to get a new maintainer. Kilian was doing a fantastic
job, but it takes time...

> If the infrastructure was still available: What does it look like? What 
> flavor of Linux? What version? How is the daily build performed? Is it a 
> script? Is the whole server rebuilt nightly from scratch, ...?

Each time there is a commit, a new build for all known linux
distributions is triggered. Everything is done through script and
virtual machines (so that we support several distributions).

That was a huge job to do. It is a pity Kilian does not maintain it
anymore :(
-- 
 _     Damien Sandras
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