0.76b2

0.76b2

Discussion between Spring developers.
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Tobi
Spring Developer
Posts: 4598
Joined: 01 Jun 2005, 11:36

0.76b2

Post by Tobi »

Ok, first of all, we got 0.76b1 out, thanks everyone for their support!

...and now people want 0.76b2 :P

The question usually is whether it is needed or not, and I like to answer it isn't, but I think in this case there is reason to start working on a bugfix release.

To look back on the 0.76b1 release, I think it went very well all in all, even if I say it myself. Really started on the release sometime around 14'ish, installer up around 16:30'ish and all critical stuff was up 'n running before 18:00. I think that's pretty fast compared to earlier releases, and I have the feeling the "buildbot" way of doing it is starting to pay off. (including the testing, etc.)


Two of the major points (of failure/attention?) in the released stuff where not really in the engine itself, but more in total system integration etc.

One is the ground decal issue in settings.exe, which has been solved already, but (unfortunately) is already enough to warrant a b2 release. This should be a good example to everyone to document more: had the setting be documented clearly this probably wouldn't have happened. (and yes I know I'm guilty too :P)

The other one is the new installer. While it's all nice and dandy, before b2 we do need to set up proper load distributing on the server (should be: serverS) behind it. In terms of server load it worked fine since it was just serving files and not doing CPU intensive PHP stuff or anything, but pipes were saturated and as such download rates were very (unacceptably?) low.

(For the stat whores ;-) approx. 660 unique IPs hit the server through the installer just on monday after release (ie. between 17:30(?) and 00:00), and some 400 more on monday night.)

On top of this the datacenter is down now, so the installer is broken. It would be cool if we could prevent this too (redundancy), but I think this may be a bit too much to ask :-)

I should've realised this all before b1 of course, but I failed at doing that :(


Then, we get to Spring issues.

The number of major bugs that slipped through testing is fairly low in my opinion. We do have some 20 odd new bugs reported on mantis, but I think this is mostly because of the promotion of mantis as bug tracker recently, and not because the build is actually more buggy then with earlier b1 releases. If you think otherwise however, feel free to say so :mrgreen:

The open bugs in the engine that would be nice to fix before b2 is, AFAICS:
  • #757 (spec timeout causes host crash) (mostly fixed before b1 but apparently it can still happen in certain circumstances)
  • #739 (hosted replays have a bug)
  • #759 (players joined under wrong names/identities)
  • #770 (Pings are high until you change the speed of the game)
I think I myself can fix the last one, if my hypothese about it is right. For the rest I will probably start having a bit less time again when exam period starts and christmas holiday ends, but I'm sure we can get out a b2 soon enough. Keep up the good work guys, and thanks for reading this looooong post :mrgreen:

As for feature freeze, I don't want to demotivate people by holding back development too much, so I won't force a total feature freeze until a few days before b2 is really going to come. I trust you all to take a bit of responsibility and not commit your uber-I-refactored-all-of-spring-and-probably-introduced-lots-of-bugs patch yet ;-) (or test it a little bit more)
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Argh
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Joined: 21 Feb 2005, 03:38

Re: 0.76b2

Post by Argh »

Firstly, I'm in full agreement that the Buildbot approach has been a huge improvement, and just keeps getting better. Being able to test stuff, and ask questions, as it's getting committed is great!

Secondly, if you guys can point the installer to an ordinary directory, I'm sure I could spare enough bandwidth for traffic- I have a 3000GB transfer limit for my 'site, and have a fairly decent hosting datacenter. Not that I want to, or can, replace Cuppy, mind you- I can't support the kind of traffic he does, for maps, etc. But I'd be willing to do it for a release, where we're only talking about a few hundred GB, even if everybody takes only from my bandwidth and downloads everything.
Tobi
Spring Developer
Posts: 4598
Joined: 01 Jun 2005, 11:36

Re: 0.76b2

Post by Tobi »

Nice, thank you! I'll get in contact as soon as something concrete is being set up.
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Argh
Posts: 10920
Joined: 21 Feb 2005, 03:38

Re: 0.76b2

Post by Argh »

No problem, it's the least I can do.
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LordMatt
Posts: 3393
Joined: 15 May 2005, 04:26

Re: 0.76b2

Post by LordMatt »

Additional bug that should be fixed before .76b2:
  • #773 Demos recorded by host with modfilename1 will not play on client machine with modfilename2 afterwards.
Also, tobi, what do you need from me with regard to the installer and .76b2? I will be getting very busy soon, so this weekend would be the best time for me to do any additional coding.
Tobi
Spring Developer
Posts: 4598
Joined: 01 Jun 2005, 11:36

Re: 0.76b2

Post by Tobi »

What I suggested to you on IRC (checking for existing maps (preferably with size check too) and skipping those while downloading) would be nice to have. I don't think there's anything else in the installer that really needs change.
Fnordia
Former Engine Dev
Posts: 425
Joined: 13 Aug 2004, 16:11

Re: 0.76b2

Post by Fnordia »

To distribute the load caused by the installer, it's probably easiest to set up a redirection script on the installer.clan-sy.com host, that instead of serving the files just redirects the request between different hosts. Then you could do stuff like sending 70% of traffic to one site for example, and perhaps even some automatic monitoring to see if any of the sites go down.

This still contains a dependency on just one machine though. I guess something like round-robin dns could be used, but don't think it is really a good solution. It may just be easiest to redirect the domain manually if there is a need. (Perhaps this should be done now as well if it is still down? :))
Fnordia
Former Engine Dev
Posts: 425
Joined: 13 Aug 2004, 16:11

Re: 0.76b2

Post by Fnordia »

Okay, installer.clan-sy.com is now redirecting requests to other servers. It should distribute the load randomly but I only have one server defined so far. :) Downloads were redirected to spring.clan-sy.com/dl/installer around 16.00.. It's certainly noticable already:

Image

Seems to be working ok so far though. But I guess this kind of shows the need for more than one server to download from.
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LordMatt
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Joined: 15 May 2005, 04:26

Re: 0.76b2

Post by LordMatt »

90% of that load was probably me downloading the team maps pack tonnes of times to figure out why it wasn't working properly (fixed now). :P
Tobi
Spring Developer
Posts: 4598
Joined: 01 Jun 2005, 11:36

Re: 0.76b2

Post by Tobi »

For now the server problem seems sort of fixed. We may need some more servers added before next release, but load is being shared by two servers now (spring.clan-sy.com and server6.unknown-files.net), so the basic infrastructure is there.

If you have a server with some bandwidth spare (and preferably rsync access) feel free to post here or PM me or LordMatt :-)
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LordMatt
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Re: 0.76b2

Post by LordMatt »

Tobi wrote:If you have a server with some bandwidth spare (and preferably rsync access) feel free to post here or PM me or LordMatt :-)
+1 I'd like to make maintaining multiple servers as painless as possible. :-)
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AF
AI Developer
Posts: 20687
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Re: 0.76b2

Post by AF »

Here at darkstars we use ~6GB bandwidth per week. Dreamhosts increases our bandwidth allowance by 40GB per week and we have 5TB per month.

These many megabytes of bandwidth are dieing a lonely death, donate your installer traffic now and you could save terabytes from almost certain death at the end of every month.

Download from here instead and make a difference!:
http://www.darkstars.co.uk/files/spring_0.76b1.exe
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LordMatt
Posts: 3393
Joined: 15 May 2005, 04:26

Re: 0.76b2

Post by LordMatt »

AF, what would be much more helpful is if you hosted the installer downloadable files (over 400MB), the installer itself is quite small (13MB). If you are interested, I would need ssh access and a folder accessible by the internets (send me a PM).
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AF
AI Developer
Posts: 20687
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Re: 0.76b2

Post by AF »

You'll need to catch me on msn for that, or the rare time I login to the lobby and get me to do it there and then. And I won't host anything that could incur Ataris wrath, so no XTA/BA.
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LordMatt
Posts: 3393
Joined: 15 May 2005, 04:26

Re: 0.76b2

Post by LordMatt »

Never mind then, I don't feel like writing the sync scripts so they sync different file groups to different servers. :P
Satirik
Lobby Developer
Posts: 1688
Joined: 16 Mar 2007, 18:27

Re: 0.76b2

Post by Satirik »

any news ?
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