Dev Meeting Minutes (1-11-2010)

Dev Meeting Minutes (1-11-2010)

Minutes of the meetings between Spring developers are archived here.
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abma
Spring Developer
Posts: 3798
Joined: 01 Jun 2009, 00:08

Dev Meeting Minutes (1-11-2010)

Post by abma »

Date: 1-11-2010
Present: jK, hoijui, Tobi, abma, Kloot

Agenda
* Welcome
* Release plan
* communication enhancement with mod-devs
* what exactly is the scope of the answer site?
* include FLOZi's changes?
* Next meeting
* Anything else? (WVTTK)

=== Welcome ===
<hoijui>who will do the minutes?
<hoijui>should i?
<abma>hm.. :-) me!
<hoijui>.. mm ok :D
<hoijui>thanks!



=== Release plan ===
<hoijui>Kloot.. i guess you have done the stuff you wanted to by now, right?
<hoijui>for a .7 release, i mean
<jK>I have to do ~2 commits for .7
<hoijui>ok
<hoijui>any estimate on that?
<Kloot>yeah, nothing else that cannot wait (based on lack of feedback)
<hoijui>ook
<hoijui>for the record: what feedback would you want?
<hoijui>just general testing of latest changes?
<Kloot>something like "I have tested build 0xab12cd and issue 123 that I complained about is now fixed"
<hoijui>ahh ok
<hoijui>i did tests with S44, and to me it seems to work well now.
<hoijui>in respect to tanks getting stuck
<hoijui>jk?
<hoijui>cant give any estimate?
<hoijui>a week, two?
<hoijui>just asking casue.. people usually ask me this a lot ;-)
<Kloot>it'd be nice if some of the more vocal BA crowd could be bothered to confirm that too :)
<hoijui>when next release will be
<jK>just need to merge master back in
<hoijui>mmm
<hoijui>ah ok :-)
<hoijui>ah yeah kloot, have you seen my KAIK crash report?
<Kloot>yeah but the trace didn't seem to make sense
<hoijui>mm
<hoijui>hmm.. it seems to look ok to me
<hoijui>except.. that i can not see what the problem shoudl be at the line it crashes
<hoijui>also.. all the crashess had hte same stack trace
<hoijui>the stack trace itsself seems coherent (often one line off though, as so often)
<Kloot>[21:19:52] <Kloot> yeah but the trace didn't seem to make sense
<Kloot>[21:20:00] <[ARP]hoijui_g5> mm
<hoijui>well.. maybe we can discuss this later...
<Kloot>trace itself is coherent yes, but the crash location does not look
<Kloot>viable
<hoijui>mm
<hoijui>ok
<hoijui>i may try if reverting that same commit that caused the hangs will fix it
<hoijui>so we coudl use that as a workaround for .7, if we can nto track it down otherwise
<Kloot>oh, is it reproducable consistently?
<Kloot>even with fd13290a01271904b0da81f3bb814b767ad25249 applied?
<hoijui>here yes,, i had it in every game
<hoijui>3 out of 3
<hoijui>aehm..
<hoijui>ahh no, did not try with that yet
<hoijui>good call, will do that after meeting
<Kloot>k
<hoijui>so theres the two jk commits nad that KAIK problem.
<hoijui>if that is solved, i will ask some guys to test and .. then we make .7, if it looks good
<Kloot> http://github.com/spring/spring/commit/ ... 3b8e94a506 should also go into .7 btw (already promised someone :x)
<hoijui>ok, sure


=== communication enhancement with mod-devs ===
<hoijui>look at etherpad maybe, for sub topics
<hoijui>shoudl we make each one its own topic?
<Kloot>hmm, the one about scope maybe
<hoijui>ok
<hoijui>by koshi: take the answer site out of bootstrap mode? (awarding more karma then in normal mode)
<hoijui>he said we shoudl decide this
<hoijui>bootsrap mode is for getting the dynamics running
<hoijui>so we get some guys with lots of karma fast, which then act as moderators
<hoijui>if we have enough of them, we can turn that off
<Kloot>can't karma be handed out manually by admins?
<hoijui>i dont know...
<hoijui>mayb this, or you can manually make someone moderator.. yeah is kind of the same
<hoijui>to me it is ok too if we turn it off already
<hoijui>it seems to be used enough
<hoijui>and we have at least 3 admins
<Kloot>agreed
<Tobi>we could post that we will turn it off in X days, prodding people into quickly participating a bit more to get some more rep :p
<hoijui>:D
<abma>with an big counter on top? :-)
<hoijui>also ok wiht me
<abma>yep, turn it off
<hoijui>maybe we should have a look how many have how much karma, and how much is needed
<Tobi>doubt there is much theory on how much is needed
<hoijui>:D :D
<hoijui>i mena.. shoudl be some setting somewhere
<Tobi>oh you mean for particular features
<hoijui>yes
<Tobi>I have that written somewhere in a nice list
<Tobi>or maybe not.. only badges and how many rep certain actions gives
<hoijui>Minimum reputation to edit others posts: 400
<hoijui>close others posts: 600
<hoijui>delete comments: 400
<Tobi>people can still flag much earlier though
<hoijui>yeah..
<hoijui>this is the highest stuff
<Tobi>and iirc if a post is flagged 5 times or so it is hidden
<hoijui>this is stuff that like.. makes you moderator, kind of..
<Tobi>yeah
<hoijui>Minimum reputation to close own question: 60
<Tobi>well I also think it is ok to turn off bootstrap sometime this week
<abma>then wait until two people have >400?
<abma>that should be sometime this week :)
<Tobi>nah I prefer just setting a date
<hoijui>only one guy is close to 400 (excluding admins)
<Tobi>simply change at next meeting?
<Tobi>then I will post later this week that on monday we change it
<Tobi>hopefully attracting some more people :-)
<hoijui>+1
<Kloot>hoping people care enough about some number on a website :)
<hoijui>:D
<hoijui>it is magic man! it's karma!!


=== what exactly is the scope of the answer site? ===
<Tobi>post count on spring forum was hidden because of that IIRC ;-)
<hoijui>:D
<Kloot>heh
<hoijui>so yeah.. the initial idea was, that it is only for mod-dev -> engine-dev
<hoijui>and mod-dev <-> mod-dev
<Tobi>well, that was the focus, but at least I personally didn't really mean to 100% exclude other things
<hoijui>thats also what was communicated in Tobis thread for example
<hoijui>ok
<Tobi>on the forum it might have been a bit different though
<hoijui>so you thing we should endorse all spring related stuff there?
<Tobi>but atm my opinion is that we should not try to kill otherwise good Spring related questions solely because they don't have to do with modding
<hoijui>think*
<jK>imo keep it clean
<hoijui>yeah
<hoijui>i want a clear rule
<jK>non modding related questions should be removed, and forum should be used for it
<hoijui>either mod stuff only, or everything (orwhatever)
<Tobi>so mapping and AI questions should be removed?
<hoijui>i do not care, but i want a clear rule
<jK>mapping & AI are modding related
<hoijui>:D :D
<Tobi>and building installers?
<abma>IMHO, too
<jK>it would be nice if the engine installer would have a plugin for mod installations
<abma>the quality matters i think...
<hoijui>welll.. we defined it as mod-dev communication enhancement
<jK>so all games/mods can use the engine installer for their ones
<abma>(quality of questions + answers)
<hoijui>i personalyy do not include AI devs and map makers in that category
<hoijui>what do you mena wiht plugin?
<jK>simple 1-2 steps to generate a custom installer for a specific game
<Tobi>[LCC]jK: look at koshi's installer creator thing
<jK>e.g. place files in folder xyz and then start make_nsis.sh
<Tobi>I don't know exactly what is needed for it or how many steps it is but it might be pretty close to what you want
<hoijui>i also remember that koshis thing allwos skinnign the instalelr or soemthing
<hoijui>and i guess it will be easier to use then what i woudl come up with
<hoijui>when trying to allow what you propose, jk
<hoijui>aehm.. we kind of got off-topic :D
<hoijui>so ...
<hoijui>it is for all sorts of questions between devs related to spring?
<hoijui>may it be engine, mod, map or AI?
<jK>yeah, just not user related things
<Tobi>hmm true yeah
<hoijui>"I get only white units (ATI), what can i do?"
<hoijui>these not, yeah?
<abma>thats for the forum...yep
<Tobi>so lets put the line at no end-user questions | only any spring related development (whether it be AI/map/mod/custom installer building/widget making/etc.) questions
<hoijui>ok!
<Tobi>we may need to take care of the tags a little though, soonish
<hoijui>yeah :D
<Tobi>maybe I'll re-tag some questions on wednesday so tags are more consistent
<hoijui>good :-)
<hoijui>i might also do some, if i get bored
<hoijui>next?
<hoijui>ouh..
<hoijui>abma mentioned quality
<hoijui>have you seen any you think are not good enough?
<hoijui>we said we either down rate them or delete?
<hoijui>i saw two so far
<hoijui>one of them, i was able to convince the author that he shoudl instead put it on forum
<hoijui>so he deleted it
<hoijui>and the other is still there
<hoijui>http://answers.springlobby.info/questio ... chitecture
<jK>no design discussions
<hoijui>which is also off-topic, in my eyes
<hoijui>yeah
<jK>no discussions at all
<hoijui>yeah.. i propose to enforce deleting there, instead of downvoting
<hoijui>next?
<Tobi>faq updated - http://answers.springlobby.info/faq/
<hoijui>:-)
<hoijui>nice :-)
<hoijui>"AI, games, maps, gadgets or widgets"
<hoijui>ouh ... :D doh
<hoijui>i though mods is missing, but there is games
<hoijui>perfect for me then


=== include FLOZi's changes ===
<hoijui> http://github.com/spring/spring/pull/3
<hoijui>i think, jk made one of them obsolete already
<hoijui>the other one is this: http://github.com/FLOZi/spring/commit/a ... 763fc91003
<hoijui>should i merge it in?
<hoijui>looks good to me
<hoijui>he siad the smae is done for features and units already
<hoijui>(defs)
<Kloot>that's fine
<hoijui>ok
<hoijui>will include it then
<jK>why the revert of PlaySoundFile?
<Kloot>he re-applied it
<hoijui>on top, there is a link/button: Files Changed

=== Next meeting ===
<hoijui>next meeting, smae day, same time?
<hoijui>for me ok
<Tobi>same
<Kloot>+1
<jK>fine


=== Anything else? (WVTTK) ===
<Tobi>thx for the website fixes abma, I will apply them on wednesday probably, still a bit busy with paper writing and other stuff
<hoijui>jk, the last two of the commits you pushed some minutes ago..
<hoijui>are the ones you meant to be in the release?
<abma>hm.. what does WVTTK mean? :-D
<Tobi>lol
<hoijui>:D i remember.. some dutch thing
<abma>"Wat Verder Ter Tafel Komt" ?
<Tobi>it means: Wat Verder Ten Tafel Komt, i.e. whatever else you want to bring in
<Tobi>yeah
<abma>aah, ok :-)
<Tobi>it's funny it got stuck in the title :P
<jK><[ARP]hoijui_g5> jk, the last two of the commits you pushed some minutes ago.. > all except the loadingscreen one
<hoijui>ok
<jK>also commiting now some other stuff, but that isn't needed to be in the release
<hoijui>ok
<abma>[LCC]jK: rts/Game/Game.cpp:2352: error: ÔÇÿconst struct CMapInfo::map_tÔÇÖ has no member named ÔÇÿhumanNameÔÇÖ
<abma>(could be, that i was to quick in pulling/compiling :)
<jK>happens when you have 10000 uncommited changes and do a textsearch ;)
<abma>:)
<hoijui>hehe :D
<hoijui>ouh man!
<hoijui>now that you have the new machine
<hoijui>and surely plenty of disc space
<hoijui>you should maybe have some separate local repos of spring
<hoijui>and keep the one you are workign on mostly clean
<jK>didn't got a new hdd
<hoijui>ah :D
<jK>hdd + PSU are the only old things left in the case ^^
<hoijui>mmm
<hoijui>and no much free space on hd?
<abma>hmm... a bit off-topic: why do we have nearly no people from asia here? do they play in general no RTS games, or ...?
<Kloot>no, they all play starcraft
<hoijui>they have star craft 1
<abma>hmm, ok... impressive-double-answer :D
<hoijui>:D
<Kloot>there was some chinese TA/spring community at one point
<hoijui>they had a mod, right?
<Kloot>yes iirc
<hoijui>for my checking-AI-Interface-ABI-compatibility problem...
<hoijui>woudl anyone have an idea?
<hoijui>one other solution woudl be, to usa a manual version
<hoijui>so whenever you change the callback, you have to change the version
<hoijui>i just cant imagine this to work in practise
<hoijui>what do you think?
<hoijui>well.. its mainly Kloot and me doing changes there
<hoijui>but.. it is tedious enough wihtout that already
<hoijui>but the only automatic tools that seem well fit for the job that i foudn so far, are written in perl
<hoijui>that woudl have to be run by CMake so... perl woudl be a build dep
<hoijui>and i am not even sure if it woudl work for windows builds.. (i see changes as high for MinGW, low for other compilers)
<Kloot>the only way I see is to compare hashes over the parsed binary representation of a header
<hoijui>yeah.. that could work, though i am not sure if we would get the smae results there for different compilers
<hoijui>and. i am also not sure how exactly to do it
<hoijui>would need somethign like .. a separate project in cmake for each header, cause only one precompiled header is allowed per project
<hoijui>or an empty main.cpp that includes all hte headers
<Kloot>well, if that method does not generate the same hash for different compilers then there is no way to decide ABI compatibility other than writing a custom pseudocompiler for C
<hoijui>yet an other option, is to stripp the headers with .. eg an AWK script (get rid of comments mainly) and hash the results
<hoijui>mm :/
<hoijui>i dont know how this perl tool does it
<hoijui>it takes headers and compield lib, and generates some intermediate file(s)
<Kloot>can you read perl? ;p
<hoijui>:D ;-)
<hoijui>no
<hoijui>yeah i know..
<hoijui>i also dont want that ;-)
<Kloot>hmm
<hoijui>using an AWK script is relatively easy, as we already require AWK anyway
<hoijui>it might indicate incompatibility when there is none, but not the other way around
<Kloot>but that can not do anything more than verify equal textual representations
<hoijui>yeah
<hoijui>for me, this would be enough already
<hoijui>this version shoudl be used to comapre if the smae version is used (header wise)
<hoijui>if it is incmpatible due to other reasons.. liek different callign convention, or 64/32 bitness or so..
<hoijui>it is basically a bug in code or packaging or something
<Kloot>or possibly different build flags
<Kloot>it just depends on how sure you want to be :)
<hoijui>yeah true
<hoijui>with this thing, i really just want to comapre different API versions, ABI wise
<hoijui>if we get problems with different compielrs or flags or so, we can still solve that
<hoijui>i cant remember we had that so far
<hoijui>as AFs Shard compiles from VS seem ot work fine on MinGW spring
User avatar
zwzsg
Kernel Panic Co-Developer
Posts: 7049
Joined: 16 Nov 2004, 13:08

Re: Dev Meeting Minutes (1-11-2010)

Post by zwzsg »

About custom installer, here's the one I made for GRTS:
GRTS_Installer_Exemple4.zip

Install all three mutiplayer lobbies + single player. At the moment single player is just a startscript, as it's intended to be used with mods that have my ingame single player lua menu. Previously I use a little skirmish generator as an external exe, which still work and could be customised for other mods (not included here).

I'm using lots of mod specific custom icon and other images for a cuter feeling. No, the installer will not magically draw new ones appropriate for you mod, this task is still manual.

There's lots "define" to make it easy to change the mod name or bump the version number.

However, if you change the mod, you probably want to change the lobbies preset:
- For SpringLobby, edit springlobby.global.conf to tell it to join the channels of your choice. I use "only show installed mod" as filter, which would work whatever your mod name is.
- For TASClient, change the .ini and .dat in \lobby\var\ to make it: join channel of/filter/notify/etc your own mod instead of gundam.
TASClient also let you use a custom skin, a custom splash picture, and a custom set of regkeys, see Satirik topic about it.
- For Zero-K, I don't know how or if it is configurable.

Also, every time the mod archive change, the single player startscript must be updated with the new name.

Maybe I could make the NSIS script write the startscript and at least part of the lobbies presets, but at the time it seemed lots of complication for not much gain.

Another sore point is that map names are not !define'd, and it's easy to forget they must be listed both in the installer section and the uninstaller section. Anyway, don't forget to thoroughly test every installer you make.

Updating this installer is a tricky operation, since there are files that must come from the new Spring, files that must come from my old instaler, and files to be merged. I tried to wrote at the top of the .nsi how to remake the installer, but explanations there are incomplete and outdated, and anyway Spring & lobbies keeps changing and much of the work of remaking the installer is finding out what's new and what's changed each time.

Anyway, no point in having written this mid-long post, since anybody wanting installer will ignore it and either whine or write his own using a completly different way.


Post-Scriptum: Why bother with installers when you can just rezip portable spring?
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