I like the idea of the interim development builds. This should be a great way to test new changes that everyone can experiment with! Thanks for doing this.
I'm thinking about how people will (mis)interpret the "FreeDOS Unstable" name. I wonder if "FreeDOS Test" might be a better name for this. The benefit of "Test" is that it is short enough to combine with the "year+month" label and stay conveniently within an "8.3" filename, so you have "TEST2207" and "TEST2208" and so on. (I know "8.3" names aren't necessary for the web server, but it's a nice symmetry for FreeDOS.) Also: I'd prefer to keep the repository for this separate from the FreeDOS official 1.3, 1.2, and and 1.1 distributions. If we put the interim development builds in the same "repositories" path as the official distributions, I think people could easily be confused about the status of the interim development builds. I think a better location is under the ".../distributions/unofficial" parent location: https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/ The path for the "FreeDOS Test" interim development builds would be: https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/test/ And the path to the interim development builds package repo (index page) would be: https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/test/pkg-html/index.html If we want to create an ISO "snapshot" of a specific test build, we can use the "year+month" path to create a clearly labeled directory: https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/test/test2207/ Jim On Wed, Jun 22, 2022 at 9:49 AM Jerome Shidel <jer...@shidel.net> wrote: > > Hi Jim and the Dev group, > > I’m in the process of wrapping up some minor improvements to the RBE > (Release Build Environment) that I wanted to make for creating the > interim development builds of FreeDOS. > > For example: > > * Automatic interim build versioning. That way we can easily verify > that any reported issues are for the current or a previous build. I > went with version numbers like U2207. The U (for Unstable) followed > by Year and Month. If for some reason additional interim builds are > created that month (major bug, etc), then a suffix of a-z is appended > (like U2207, U2207a, U2207b, U2208, U2209, etc). > > * Automatic CHANGES.LOG. This will be included on the interim builds > and actual release build media (LiveCD, LegacyCD and FullUSB) going > forward. It is created by parsing the commit logs for changes since the > last release (or interim build) in all of the various projects. There > is some automatic filtering of things like updated timestamp and > unimportant commits. Unfortunately, this means I’ll need to start > writing better commit comments. :-( Anyway, it looks like this… > >> Changes since FreeDOS 1.3 release >> >> 2022-06-22 10:02:08 project_RBE (shidel): Adjust interim build file names >> 2022-06-22 09:13:23 project_RBE (shidel): Automatic Unstable Build Versioning >> 2022-06-21 09:21:37 project_FD-NLS (shidel): added FreeDOS release README to >> NLS project >> 2022-06-19 20:43:04 project_FD-NLS (cardpuncher): Add files via upload >> 2022-06-19 19:51:27 project_FD-NLS (shidel): from W.Spiegl >> … >> 2022-06-17 23:29:30 project_FD-NLS (Andrew Bird): Fixup incorrect UTF-8 file >> extension suffix >> 2022-06-13 14:46:45 sbpmixer (Shidel): Initial commit >> 2022-06-13 10:50:00 sbpmixer (shidel): v2.0 >> 2022-06-06 21:32:25 project_FD-NLS (cardpuncher): Add files via upload >> 2022-06-03 06:53:06 project_FD-NLS (shidel): W.Spiegl >> 2022-05-30 10:38:58 project_FD-NLS (shidel): Codepage corrections >> 2022-05-26 10:42:04 xdel (shidel): v2.08 >> 2022-05-24 02:31:32 xdel (shidel): v2.07 >> 2022-05-17 07:40:47 fasm (shidel): v1.73.30 >> … > > > * Interim builds use slightly different file names so they are not > confused with release builds. > > * Interim build package update > links now point to the Unstable software repo ( > https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/unstable/pkg-html/index.html > ) instead of a version specific repository. The Unstable repo contains > the latest package versions. > > What is left to (probably) do… > > * Maybe… Update installer theme when using interim build. I’m > thinking black background to differentiate it a normal release (blue > background). > > * Maybe… Add boot message noting/warning that it is not a release > build. Maybe… > > “Warning: This is a FreeDOS development build and is for testing > purposes. It may exhibit behavior vary different from a release > build and may not be suitable for regular use. For general use, > please consider using the latest release build available at > http://freedos.org” > > Anyhow, we should be ready for the first interim build on July 1st. > > At some point, I will probably shove the RBE onto one of the machines > I have laying around with a cron job to create an interim build each > month. Then, automatically upload it if there are any changes. > > :-) > > Jerome _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
