Development virtual machine

[koshi]

Im not sure how devving on linux works, do you use some IDE, where you can graphically set breakpoints, watch variables and modify code on the run?

QtCreator (my personal favorite), kdevelop, codeblocks are a couple of examples,all of which work with cmake based buildsytems out-of-the box.

Or do people just use gdb like 25 years ago.

That's not an exclusive or. QtCreator for example uses gdb with it's own (python scriptable) frontend.

[hoijui]

all the non-simple bugs can usually just be hunted when you sync.

with the build-slave VM, you can share source- and build-dir between host and guest. so you can use whatever IDE you want, on your own machine.

[Licho]

With VS build its simple to send exe to friends and test with them, or even modify zero-k lobby to auto fetch such exe if needed..

3 of potential new engine devs are CA team, 3 other are/were already contributing (jK, det, sirmaverick).

I'm sure we can arrange test games internally.

[aegis]

now that I've setup a cross compile env from scratch once I think it would be easy to reproduce

we can not give build-bot usage allowance to everyone that might someday write a patch. (could be) too much load for the server, whether used normally or abused. same applies for making access to it public of course.

I'm willing to give public access to a spring buildbot interface on my shiny new cluster if someone can provide a buildbot

[SpliFF]

Don't mean to just point out problems but hoijoi is right, this thing has no reasonable reason to exist.

If you are competent enough in C++ to contribute anything of value then you're competent enough to install the required tools. Furthermore if you're just too lazy to install the tools then you're almost certainly not the kind of person anyone wants to receive patches from. If the whole issue is simply that you have a hard-on for VS then the answer is to update the broken VS build files.

If you want to develop you need the tools in your native environment. The reason is that even though you can cross-compile you'll run into problems with GDB unless you also install and configure a GDB server. By the time you figure that out it would have been easier just to install the tools.

[Licho]

What a BS, I'm reasonable competent, I spent some time as engine developer pro for game industry. We are telling you we CBA to go through setup process. It's waste of time, I'm willing to work on engine, I'm not willing to spend time to set it up.

How hard is it to understand? Accessibility must be top priority not only for game itself but also for developer environment.

If it's too hard for you to make and maintain 1 extra developer environment why do you expect its going to be simple for others and they would like to go through it?

[AF]

I think there's minimal value in a virtual machine setup since one would have to learn how to use the setup, which while removing the cost of setting it up in the first place, is still a significant obstacle. Most of the applications I see of it would be in developing things with existing devs to save time, rather than making it easier for new devs.

Setting up easy visual studio access for internal/private development of builds would be more advantageous to the potential CA developer scenario, aswell as the academic AI interests we've seen here.

[Licho]

I would prefer VS setup too.

[zwzsg]

So you're telling me that if the MinGW team left their install system in such a mess of a broken state, it was merely as a trial of worth, to ensure only high level wizards were granted access to its power?
Then I last tried like a year ago, hopefully situation changed by now.

I remember back when Spring was young and SJ in charge, the source was a visual studio project, and even an unworthy lazy subintelligent person like me managed to compile Spring without any hassle.

[Satirik]

THIS is a good idea !

[SinbadEV]

...only high level wizards...

The "wizards only effect" is the most annoying thing about software development... I know I know how to program (granted, my style is terrible, but I can get things done) but it seems like the only people who realize that making an IDE, SDK or Api usable is Microsoft...

[FLOZi]

Compiling Spring with MinGW isn't *that* hard to set up.

[SinbadEV]

well in this particular case I haven't actually tried to compile spring for a number of years... I was speaking more generally.

[Beherith]

I may be clueless here, but downloading, setting up and compiling spring from latest master in vs8 took me about 10 minutes, that's including fixing some stuff in Color.h that VS wasn't liking and removing dsound.lib from linker dependencies.

The only issue I see is that it might not sync with mingw build.

[very_bad_soldier]

I may be clueless here, but downloading, setting up and compiling spring from latest master in vs8 took me about 10 minutes, that's including fixing some stuff in Color.h that VS wasn't liking and removing dsound.lib from linker dependencies.

You are not normal, I hope you know that. Normal people need 10 minutes just for finding and installing git for Windows, finding spring's github-link and downloading the sources. Not speaking of finding VS libs and actually compiling. I did it two are three times but it took me alot longer than 10 minutes I may not be the smartes guy on the planet though.

[AF]

Most of the time I spend when setting up a new visual studio build is spent finding the right vclibs >.<

[Licho]

If it was simple, you would have plenty of coders and much higher proportion of windows developers.
Linux has what - 1% of market and yet it has like 90% of engine developers here.. Windows users just cba to do painful stuff like reading through walls of texts and clicking on links to download extra libs and tools and then fixing compilation and linking.
Especially if its not directly relevant to work at hand, its just time wasted doing annoying thing.

[FLOZi]

If you put as much time into actually trying to get mingw set up as you've spent moaning in this thread that it's such 'wasted time' you'd have it done by now.

[AF]

As I said before, Setting it up being hard isnt the only problem. Actually developing with it once youve set it up is hard too if your unfamiliar with it. I wouldnt have a clue how to get started with gdb, and would have to learn it.

Visual studio on the other hand is very familiar to a lot of people, there'd be no learning the tools involved.

[Licho]

I already spent hour preparing new virtual machine with linux on springrts.com FLOZi.

And I already wasted several hours installing mingw and building in VS in the past.

I had it working several times in far past, I just don't want to force everyone to go through it if there is simpler solution.