Author Topic: Release interval (Read 9607 times)

Tank · « **on:** May 25, 2009, 09:24:34 am »

Hey,

what do you, especially Laurent, think of a shorter release interval? As far as I recognized, SFML releases are made only when bigger changes have been done. The good thing is, that it's mostly very stable, the bad thing is, that bugs which have been overseen (

) are there for months (or weeks).

What about releasing revisions for things that have been fixed and are relevant for stability? For example, the USB joystick bug is in 1.4, but has already been fixed in 1.5. Why not release a bugfix release 1.4.1?

Greetings

Laurent · « **Reply #1 on:** May 25, 2009, 12:12:55 pm »

I wish I could do that, but releasing a new version involves a lot of work and time spent for me.

ptrxyz · « **Reply #2 on:** May 25, 2009, 01:48:56 pm »

I guess downloading the SVN and compiling it is more or less the same...

Daazku · « **Reply #3 on:** May 25, 2009, 02:04:02 pm »

Quote from: "ptrxyz"

I guess downloading the SVN and compiling it is more or less the same...

Exact.
Just update your version via the svn.. i take couple of mins...
Neway fast releast = less test = more bugs...

Hiura · « **Reply #4 on:** May 25, 2009, 03:59:30 pm »

@Laurent, don't you have a bash script to build packages ?

Laurent · « **Reply #5 on:** May 25, 2009, 04:19:11 pm »

Quote

@Laurent, don't you have a bash script to build packages ?

It's not that easy, making a release requires many manual steps that can't be automated.

Hiura · « **Reply #6 on:** May 25, 2009, 05:05:30 pm »

Since I use vim and Linux I have forgotten that VC, C::B, ... exist. :-°

Now I remember why you have to use your hands.

Tank · « **Reply #7 on:** June 05, 2009, 10:32:23 am »

I'm using SVN, of course. But (many!) others don't.

Laurent, a suggestion for building software packages with ease is using some kind of automated build environment, like BuildBot, or a set of cross compilers.

Btw, do you need someone building SFML for Linux 64 Bit?

Laurent · « **Reply #8 on:** June 05, 2009, 10:47:17 am »

Compiling is not a big deal, it's just a few buttons to hit.
What takes most of the time is updating the website, increasing the version number everywhere it appears, making sure that every tutorial is up-to-date, synchronizing with external contributors for ports and bindings, uploading the 200 Mb of archives, making annoucements, ... This kind of stuff can hardly be automated

But don't worry, in the future there will be more releases. Starting with SFML 2.0, the API will have a stable interface, and I'll be able to release minor versions (bug fixes) that don't require all the steps of a major release.

Quote

Laurent, a suggestion for building software packages with ease is using some kind of automated build environment, like BuildBot, or a set of cross compilers.

From what I've seen, BuildBot is a tool for automating compiling and unit tests, not for creating distributable packages.

Quote

Btw, do you need someone building SFML for Linux 64 Bit?

Absolutely

Laurent · « **Reply #9 on:** June 05, 2009, 10:56:25 am »

I could also provide a direct link to the latest SVN snapshot, as a downloadable archive. This would still require to compile SFML, but it gets rid of all the SVN stuff.

What do you think of this solution?

Tank · « **Reply #10 on:** June 06, 2009, 12:46:13 pm »

True, updating all the documentation and such is much work. The good thing is that most bugfix releases won't need to update any documentation at all.

But you already said that.

Quote

From what I've seen, BuildBot is a tool for automating compiling and unit tests, not for creating distributable packages.

That's true. BuildBot becomes handy when there's something that needs to be built for various platforms and in a distributed way. But you already said that building SFML doesn't take much time on your side, so BuildBot won't be interesting here.

Quote

Quote
Btw, do you need someone building SFML for Linux 64 Bit?

Absolutely

I'm on my way.

Quote

I could also provide a direct link to the latest SVN snapshot, as a downloadable archive. This would still require to compile SFML, but it gets rid of all the SVN stuff.

What do you think of this solution?

Hell yeah, that sounds great. The "problem" often is that some people use the SVN version of SFML when linking their apps. Others usually use the stable releases, so binaries and libraries aren't compatible. With releasing the latest snapshot, this can be avoided. Thank you.

Laurent · « **Reply #11 on:** June 06, 2009, 01:47:57 pm »

Quote

Hell yeah, that sounds great. The "problem" often is that some people use the SVN version of SFML when linking their apps. Others usually use the stable releases, so binaries and libraries aren't compatible. With releasing the latest snapshot, this can be avoided. Thank you

Done:
http://www.sfml-dev.org/download.php

Tank · « **Reply #12 on:** June 06, 2009, 02:00:38 pm »

Thanks.

Laurent · « **Reply #13 on:** June 06, 2009, 02:21:11 pm »

I've also added the Linux 64-bits packages to the download page

Ceylo · « **Reply #14 on:** June 06, 2009, 02:30:48 pm »

Quote from: "Laurent"

Quote
Hell yeah, that sounds great. The "problem" often is that some people use the SVN version of SFML when linking their apps. Others usually use the stable releases, so binaries and libraries aren't compatible. With releasing the latest snapshot, this can be avoided. Thank you

Done:
http://www.sfml-dev.org/download.php

Note that this snapshot does not preserve symbolic links, and is therefore not usable for Mac OS X (there are symbolic links in the OpenAL and sndfile frameworks).