Draft for mail about ci

[Halla Rempt]

We tried Craft back in the days -- I think around 2012. But it's a solution that's not really related to our problem: we already have a working setup to create our dependencies, and we need to have CI that uses that, as well as CI that uses distro deps, and a solution for when the distro doesn't have our deps at the required version, or at all.

Halla


On donderdag 9 maart 2023 23:12:32 CET Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> On Donnerstag, 9. März 2023 22:21:19 CET L. E. Segovia wrote:
> > Based on the previous emails, it seems a key item wasn't covered:
> > 
> > 6) Local builds with 3rdparty deps (replica CI environment)
> > 
> >      * uses our custom deps built from 3rdparty folder
> >      * can be rebuilt locally
> > 
> > Now, I'm totally unfamiliar with Craft's rationale and how it works, so
> > I have three questions coming from my own experience tinkering with
> > 3rdparty.
> > 
> > - Ben had told me, if I'm not mistaken, about make DESTDIR being the
> > workhorse of Craft. I know that CMake may disallow it it in Windows:
> > https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/envvar/DESTDIR.html. So, does Craft
> > work with Windows dependencies, whether MSVC or Clang?
> 
> I'm not sure I understand the question. Craft was originally developed to 
> build KDE application on Windows and it works very well with MSVC 2019. It 
> works equally well with MinGW. I don't know anything about builds with Clang 
> on Windows.
> 
> > - Does KDE sysadmin allow external retrieval of the packages for a
> > developer environment? If so, what's the procedure to recreate it using
> > Craft?
> 
> The Craft cache is available for everyone, i.e. in particular for locally 
> running builds with Craft. Using Craft is really easy once it's set up. 
> (Setting it up is also pretty easy.) https://community.kde.org/Craft
> 
> > - Does Craft require a certain directory layout? In other words, does it
> > support relocatable dependencies outside of Unix-based operating systems?
> 
> Again, I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Since Craft was developed for 
> Windows builds originally, I assume that the answer to your second question is 
> yes. Craft builds all dependencies individually. For the application and all 
> dependencies so called blue prints (written in Python) describe where to find 
> the sources, what the dependencies are, and how to build it.
> 
> By the way, the semi-automatic (via manual GitLab jobs) publication of the 
> builds on app stores, e.g. Microsoft Store, is also part of the full GitLab 
> CI/CD story. See
> https://blogs.kde.org/2023/01/16/neochat-published-microsoft-store.
> 
> Regards,
> Ingo
>