[Coco] Building NitrOS-9 on Mac OS X

[Tormod Volden]

On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 7:14 AM, Steve Ostrom wrote:
>
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Allen Huffman
> Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2015 11:51 PM
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Building NitrOS-9 on Mac OS X
>
>> On Jan 21, 2015, at 11:35 PM, Steve Ostrom <smostrom7 at comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> I'm not an OS-9 user (maybe someday), but what is meant by "current
>> nightly build"?  Does someone from this list actively rebuild NitrOS9 so
>> that each day the files are different from the previous day?  What would be
>> the reason for this?  Wouldn't that be like Art reissuing ADOS every day
>> with a few changes?  I'm not putting this down, just trying to understand
>> what is happening behind the scenes.  Why does NitrOS9 need to be rebuilt so
>> often?
>
>
> For software projects where there are multiple people contributing, they
> will have all the sources available for development. Folks will work on bits
> and pieces and others will download and test and give feedback. These
> nightly builds can be dangerous, since you never know what you're going to
> get. At some point, a decision will be made to release it and it will be
> given a version number. It seems that the OS-9 project has gone years
> sometimes without an official release, but there have always been updates
> going into the nightly builds.
>
> In my case, in order to get some of the new support, I have to get the
> nightly build. The release version is too old to have them. Thus, why some
> of us are experiencing problems. Think of it like beta.
>
> --------------
>
> Thanks, Allen.  So if I want to someday try NitrOs9, I should stay away from
> nightly builds, and just use the last fully released version?  And this is
> for a real Coco3, and not an emulator running on Linux or Windows?

There have been times when the last release was many years old, so
people had to use a nightly build (or development snapshot if you
like) to get important bug fixes and features. For the time being
there isn't so much added since the latest release (3.3.0), so I would
recommend to install the official release first. But if you want to
see the latest in e.g. SDC support you should try the nightlies. We
have the ambition of making timely releases now, so once there is
enough new and it has been enough tested we will make a new release.

Of course, having as many people as possible testing the nightly build
is very important for the quality and efficiency of the development.
Regressions and new bugs are discovered quickly and can be fixed
easily while the code is fresh in mind, and it gets fixed before a
release is done. And it is easier to make release when you know the
new code has been tested on many systems. So the more "nightly"
testing is done, the better releases we'll get, and hopefully more
often.

I believe there is nothing "scary" in the nightlies at the moment so
don't be afraid of trying them. But if you install for the very first
time, it is better to start off with a known good version.

And to answer Steve, yes, someone performs a full rebuild of all the
code and all disk images when a nightly is made. Fortunately this
consists of running one simple command, and the whole build takes 5
minutes.

Tormod