The debug settings are stored in a .user file which should not be added to source control. However this file does contain useful information. Now I need to set each time I trying to build a fresh checkout.
Is there some workaround to make this less cumbersome?
Edit: It contains the debug launch parameters. This is often not really a per-user setting. The default is $(TargetPath), but I often set it to something like $(SolutionDir)TestApp\test.exe with a few command line arguments. So it isn't a local machine setting per se.
Well, I believe this file is human readable (xml format I think?), so you could create a template that is put into source control that everyone would check out, for instance settings.user.template. Each developer would than copy this to settings.user or whatever the name is and modify the contents to be what they need it to be.
Its been a while since I've looked at that file, but I've done similar things to this numerous times.
Set the debug launch parameters in a batch file, add the batch file to source control. Set the startup path in VS to startup.bat $(TargetPath).
Related
I'd like to get scons to read a previous version number from a file, update a source file with a new version number and current date and then write the number back to the original file ready for the next build.
This needs to happen only when the target is out of date. IOW the version number doesn't change if no build takes place. The original file is source controlled and isn't a source file else it could trigger another build on check-in (due to CI). CLARIFICATION From scons' point of view the code will always be out of date due to the auto-generated source file but scons will only be run from a Continuous Integration job (Jenkins) when a SCM change is detected.
I've looked into AddPostMethod, but this seems to fire for all files within the list of source files.
Command and Builder methods use the VARIANT_DIR so I can't edit these files and then check them back in as they no longer map to the repo.
I'm hoping I'm just misunderstanding some of the finer details of scons else I'm running out of ideas!
Update
Thinking this through some more, Tom's comment is correct. Although I have two files, one version controlled text file (non-source code) and one non-source controlled source file there is no way to check one file in and prevent a continuous build/check-in cycle. Jenkins will see the new text file and spin off a build, and scons will see the new generated file. So unless I delete the generated file at some point, although this seems to go against the workflow of both tools.
Does anyone have any method for achieving this? It seems pretty straightforward. Ultimately I just want to generate build numbers each time a build is started.
From SCons User Guide section 8, Order-Only Dependencies, you can use the Requires method:
import time
# put whatever text you want in your version.c; this is just regular python
version_c_text = """
char *date = "%s";
""" % time.ctime(time.time())
open('version.c', 'w').write(version_c_text)
version_obj = Object('version.c')
hello = Program('hello.c',
LINKFLAGS = str(version_obj[0]))
Requires(hello, version_obj)
Two things to note: first you have to add the explicit Requires dependency. Second, you can't make version_obj a source of the Program builder, you have to cheat (here we pass it as a linkflag), otherwise you'll get an automatic full dependency on it.
This will update the version.c always, but won't rebuild just because version.c changed.
I have following scenario:
The main software I wrote uses a database created by a simulator. This database is around 10 GB big at the moment, so I want to keep only one copy of that data per system.
Assuming I have following projects:
Main Software using the data, located at /SimData
DLL using the data for debugging, searching for data at /SimData
Debugging tool to parse the image database, searching for the data at /SimData
Since I do not want to have all those programs have their own copy of SimData (not only to decrease place used, but also to ensure that all Simulation data used is always up to date for all programs).
I created for the DLL and Debugging Utility a link named SimData to MainSoftware/SimData, but when opening a file with "SimData\MyFile.data" it cannot find it, only the MainSoftware with the ACTUAL SimData folder can find it.
How can I use the MainSoftware/SimData folder without setting absolute paths?
This is on Windows 7 x64
I agree with Peter about adding the DB location as a configurable parameter. A common place to store that is in the registry.
however, If you want to create links that will be recognized by your software, try hardlinks. . fsutil should do the trick as described here.
You need a way to configure the database location. You could use an INI or other configuration file, or a registry setting, or a command-line input, or an environment variable. Or You could write your program to search a directory hierarchy... for example, if the various modules are usually siblings of each other in your directory tree, you could search for SimData/MyFile.data, ../SimData/MyFile.data, ../../MainSoftware/SimData/Myfile.data, and use the first one found.
Which answer is the "right one" depends on your situation.
I have several (15 or so) builds which all reference the same string of text in their respective build process templates. Every 90 days that text expires and needs to be updated in each of the templates. Is there a way to create a central variable or argument
One solution would be to create an environment variable on your build machine. Then reference the variable in all of your builds. When you needed to update the value you would only have to set it in one place.
How to: Use Environment Variables in a Build
If you have more than one build machine then it could become too much of a maintenance issue.
Another solution would involve using MSBuild response files. You create an .rsp file that holds the property value and the value would be picked up and set from MSBuild via the command line.
You need to place it into somewhere where all your builds can access it, then customize your build process template to read from there (build definitions - as you know - do not have a mechanism to share data between defs).
Some examples would be a file checked into TFS, a file in a known location (file share), web page, web service, etc.
You could even make a custom activity that knew how to read it and output the result as an OutArgument (e.g. Custom activity that read the string from a hardcoded URL).
Say I have ini/json to store configuration setting of my desktop application,Will it be ok to have a static object with all property loaded at startup/when ever it is required or is there any other better alternative?
Since this is the very first time I am doing this ,so just wanted to know whether static object is fine or singleton pattern or something else would be better
I usually use Boost.Program_options, and I usually use a singleton.
Either way is fine.
If it was me, I would have it on construction of the config object.
cConfig Config("config.ini");
This Config class would load the settings found in the file. Any code can access the settings by doing
Config.Get("NumberOfFoobars")
For testability purposes, if there is no file in the construction, the class' settings is set to default or a log file is created with a line advising the user of the missing settings.
And then for functions that needs the config, I would pass the Config instance as part of the parameters:
DoStuff(Config, [...]);
and have DoStuff get the variables from the Config class.
This makes the class testable (you can mock Config class), readeable (at a glance, you can tell which function requires Configs) and you don't have to rely on static instances (singletons are dangerous if you don't know how to use them).
You might be interested to learn more about this
If the config settings is going to be modified by the user to determine the way the application is going to run, then it might be better to keep it in some ini file. Some users like to edit ini files directly rather than do it through the GUI. It is better to give both the options.
Also some user have multiple ini files and rotate among them for settings they need at that point of time.
Loading all your settings at startup (or the first time a setting is needed) will work most of the time, but the user will have to restart the application in order for any edits to the config file to take effect. For most users this will never be an issue, but for advanced users who like to edit config files directly this could be frustrating. On UNIX based OSs it is possible to handle the SIGHUP signal which has become a accepted trigger to re-read configuration files. There is no similar method that I know of for Windows. An alternative approach would be to keep track of the modification time of the config file to determine if the settings should be re-read.
I wish to store a single variable in my application that will be saved between runs. This will be a version number that will be used to trigger an update option and so will change only rarely.
Does anyone have suggestions on the best way of implementing this? Considering it's such a simple requirement I am interested in the simplest solution.
Thanks!
Normally, that sort of information will be held in a constant (not a variable) in the binary, and the binary will contact an external site to find out whether there is a more recent version of the software. When it downloads the new, the newly downloaded file will have a new constant embedded in it.
Alternatively, you could keep the information in some sort of file in the file system. I'm not familiar with the Symbian environment, but something similar most likely exists.
It has already been mentioned, so I am going to elaborate on it. Create a file in your project directory that will contain the version number. Make that file a part of final SIS file by adding a line about it in the PKG file---for example, put a line in the PKG file to tell the installer to copy the file to a place like c:\System\Apps\${AppName}\${filename} on the device. Within code, read the version number from that file. The advantage you will have from doing it this way is that when you update your code and edit the file in your project directory and recreate an updated SIS file, on updating the SIS on the device, the version file will automatically get replaced with the current one.