[Scummvm-devel] The new Buildbot: what’s happening, what needs to happen

[Marcus Comstedt]

Hi,

Colin Snover <scummvm-devel at zetafleet.com> writes:

> 3. Porters do stuff which is totally undocumented, like the Nero images
> which are currently being created for the Dreamcast port.

Unfortunately this is also something that requires manual attention
for each release, so while documentation would probably be a good
thing, trying to hide it behind automation is not going to work.

Background:  Initially there was only one Nero image generated for
each release, containing all the plugins.  At some point however
ScummVM grew so much that it was no longer possible to load all
plugins or the memory of the Dreamcast (16M) would be exhausted even
without loading any game.  For people mastering their own discs from
the plainfiles this is not a problem, just include only those plugins
you need and you'll be fine, but the Neros are for people who just
want to burn something with minimal hassle.  So the solution was to
create two disc images, with half the plugins on each.  Depending on
which plugin you needed you'd pick the correct disc to boot from
before swapping in your game disc, and everything would be fine.

But of course ScummVM continued growing, soon requiring a 3-split
instead of a 2-split, so basically I need to check for each release
how the plugins can be split to produce a working setup.  With 2.0 we
finally reached the point where a 4-split is needed.  A buildbot
would not have been able to cope with that.

I also make an effort to pick out some demos to put on the Nero discs,
which A) are not unduly large (to keep download sizes sane), and B)
match some plugin on that disc.  As the split changes, this selection
needs manual reevaluation as well.


  // Marcus