Xcode 11 has changed the way that versions are handled.
So far I had two targets, Dev & Prod, each with a separate versions. Prod version would be entirely manual, Dev would be automated:
During a build, a script would run, which then would fetch git tags. One tag would contain information about the latest Dev version. If it's newer, it would update version inside Info.plist just for the Dev target
When Dev would be deployed using a script (create an ipa, resign for in-house distribution, upload), the build version would then be increased. Remote tag containing version information would then be updated
In this way everyone's dev version would get automatically synchronized and managing multiple dev builds would be be easy. Prod would be updated relatively infrequently so it can be managed manually.
However, in Xcode 11 whenver version (or build) is updated inside the General tab, entries in Info.plist are replaced with $(CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION) and $(MARKETING_VERSION) and Current Project Version and Marketing Version inside the build settings tab is used instead.
So far I would use PlistBuddy in order to read and update versions inside Info.plist, but from what understand now I'd have to use agvtool. However, there are two issues with it:
If it's ran as a Run Script phase, it causes the build process to cancel
It is unable to handle separate versions for two targets (so I cannot just automatically manage Dev, while leaving Prod alone)
I know that theoretically I can still use Info.plist for versioning, but the moment someone changes version manually in the General tab, the whole thing will get messed up (from experience I know that this will happen).
I have two questions:
Is my understanding of the process correct?
Can still have a version management system using agvtool similar to what I had before?
Related
In my iOS project, I have the following settings in the Runner -> General tab, under the Identity section:
Version: $(FLUTTER_BUILD_NAME)
Build: $(FLUTTER_BUILD_NUMBER)
which is the same as when creating a brand new Flutter project. However, when I was going to create an Archive for releasing my app, Xcode complained that those fields were missing or incorrect (I don't remember the exact error message).
The only way I could build the release app was to change them to hardcoded strings - i.e. 1.0.0 and 1 respectively. What could be causing this issue? It would be a nuisance to have to remember to update those for every release, and I shouldn't have to, right?
If you created this project with an older Flutter version
several files created in the ios/ and android/ sub-directories might be outdated.
Newer Flutter versions might generate these files a bit differently and projects created with older Flutter versions might cause issues.
Ways to fix
Delete the ios/ and android/ directories and run flutter create . to re-generate these directories.
HINT
Custom changes will be lost and need to be re-applied. This is easiest if the project is committed to a version control system like Git.
I am looking for a tool to manage the collection of binary files (input components) that make up a software release. This is a software product and we have released multiple versions each year for the last 20 years. The details and types of files may vary, but this is something many software teams need to manage.
What's a Software Release made of?
A mixture of files go into our software releases, including:
Windows executables/binaries (40 DLLs and 30+ EXE files).
Scripts used by the installer to create a database
API assemblies for various platforms (.NET, ActiveX, and Java)
Documentation files (HTML, PDF, CHM)
Source code for example applications
The full collected files for a single version of the release are about 90MB. Most are built from source code, but some are 3rd party.
Manual Process
Long ago we managed this manually.
When starting each new release the files used to build the last release would be copied to a new folder on a shared drive.
The developers would manually add or update files in this folder (hoping nothing was lost or deleted accidentally).
The software installer script would be compiled using the files in this folder to produce a SETUP.EXE (output).
Iterate steps 2 and 3 during validation & testing until release.
Automatic Process
Some years ago we adopted CI (building our binaries nightly or on-demand).
We resorted to putting 3rd party binaries under version control since they usually don't change as often.
Then we automated the process of collecting & updating files for a release based on the CI build outputs. Finally we were able to automate the construction of our SETUP.EXE.
Remaining Gaps
Great so far, but this leaves us with two problems:
Rebuilding Assemblies The CI mostly builds projects when something has changed, but when forced it will re-compile a binary that doesn't have any code change. The output is a fresh build of a binary we've previously tested (hint: should we always trust these are equivalent?).
Latest vs Stable Mostly our CI machine builds the latest versions of each project. In some cases this is ok, but often we want to release an older tested or stable version. To do this we have separate CI projects for the latest and stable builds - this works but is clumsy.
Thanks for your patience if you've got this far :-)
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
After some time searching for solutions it seems it might be easier to build our own solution, but surely someone else has solved these problems before!?
What we want is a way to store and manage binary files (either outputs from CI, or 3rd party files) such that each is tagged with a version (v1.2.3.4) that allows:
The CI to publish new versions of each binary (but reject rebuilt versions that already exist).
The development team to make a recipe for a software release (kinda like NuGet packages.config) that specifies components to include:
package name
version
path/destination in the release folder
The Automatic package script to use the recipe collect the required files, and compile the install package (e.g. SETUP.EXE).
I am aware of past debates about storing binaries in a VCS. For now I am looking for a better solution. That approach does not appear ideal for long-term ongoing use (e.g. how to prune old binaries)... amongst other issues.
I have tried some artifact repositories currently available. From my investigation these provide a solution for component/artifact storage and version control. However they do not provide tools for managing a list of components/artifacts to include in a software release.
Does anybody out there know of tools for this?
Have you found a way to get your CI infrastructure to address these remaining issues?
If you're using an artifact repository to solve this problem, how do you manage and automate the process?
This is a very broad topic, but it sounds like you want a release management tool (e.g. BuildMaster, developed by my company Inedo), possibly in conjunction with a package management server like ProGet (which you tagged, and is how I discovered this question).
To address some specific questions you have, I'll associate it with a feature that would solve the problem:
A mixture of files go into our software releases, including...
This is handled in BuildMaster with artifacts. This video gives a basic overview of how they are manually added to releases and deployed to a file system: https://inedo.com/support/tutorials/buildmaster/deployments/deploying-a-simple-web-app-to-iis
Of course, once that works to satisfaction, you can automate the import of artifacts from your existing CI tool, create them from a BuildMaster deployment plan itself, pull them from your package server, whatever. Down the line you can also have your CI tool call the BuildMaster release management API to create a release and automatically have it include all the artifacts and components you want (this is what most of our customers do now, i.e. have a build step in TeamCity create a release from a template).
Rebuilding Assemblies ... The output is a fresh build of a binary we've previously tested (hint: should we always trust these are equivalent?)
You can mostly assume they are equivalent functionally, but it's only the times that they are not that problems arise. This is especially true with package managers that do not lock dependencies to specific version numbers (i.e. NuGet, npm). You should be releasing exactly the same binary that was tested in previous environments.
[we want] the development team to make a recipe for a software release (kinda like NuGet packages.config) that specifies components to include:
This is handled with releases. A developer can choose its name, dates, etc., and associate it with a pipeline (i.e. a set of testing stages that the artifacts are deployed to), then can "click the deploy button" and have the automation do all the work.
Releases are grouped by "application", similar to a project in TeamCity. As a more advanced use case, you can use deployables. Deployables are essentially individual components of an application you include in a release; in your case the "Documentation" could be a deployable, and maybe contain an artifact of the .pdf and .docx files. Deployables from other applications (maybe a different team is responsible for them, or whatever) can then be referenced and "included" in a release, or you can reference ones from a past release.
Hopefully that provides some overview and fits your needs. Getting into this space is a bit overwhelming because there are so many terms, technologies, and methodologies, but my advice is to start simple and then slowly build upon it, e.g.:
deploy a single, manually uploaded component through BuildMaster to a share drive, then manually deploy it from there
add a deployment plan that imports the component
add a second plan and associate it with the 2nd stage that takes the uploaded artifact and deploys it to the target, bypassing the need for the share drive
add more deployment plans and associate them with pipeline stages and promote through them all to "close out" a release
add an agent and deploy to that instead of the default localhost server
add more components and segregate their deployment with deployables
add event listeners to email team members at points in the process
start adding approvals if you require gated "sign-offs"
and so on.
I have just proceed to update my current Eclipse Oxygen installation to the latest versions (including Oxygen.1). As I did before (with previous Neon iterations for example), I have launched Eclipse using the administrator mode on Windows.
After updating all the componants, when I restart using the normal mode, all the settings I have made in my own workspace seems to have be fully overwritten: it now looks like the default workspace.
I don't understand if I have made something wrongly or if there have been a bug during the upgrade process, but I would want to know if there is a way to retrieve my previous workspace and to prevent this kind of behaviour.
I have a variant sandbox, with several subprojects in it configured to also follow a variant, but there is one which is configured to be fixed on a build. (Namely, the sources are variants, while the make toolchain is developed by another team, and we want to use a specific version of it.)
What I need to do, is change the build version of this subproject, but only for my local sandbox, without updating the member revisions for the rest of the team to resynchronise.
I read things about doing a checkout at specific checkpoint, which could be fine, expect that they suggest getting the revision at a specific time, which doesn't ensure at all that it was actually this version that was used in the checkpoint. As a temporary workaround, I created a build sandbox of the checkpoint I'm interested in and merged both sandboxes locally on the hard drive, which I find very lame... Is there a better solution?
We're using composer, satis and SVN to manage our in-house PHP libraries.
We commit changes to SVN trunk during development, then tag versions (following semantic versioning) when they're ready for testing.
Once a library version is tagged, we can use composer as part of our deployment to the testing environment. Following successful testing, we'd then deploy that same version to production.
The issue here, is that once we've tagged a version for testing, we have to be very careful as the newly tagged version will be picked up by composer when preparing the next prod release.
What I'm imagining, is that we'd tag a version as a beta or RC, (eg v1.1RC1) and somehow configure our deployment process such that it will refuse to deploy an RC or beta to production. If a version is tested successfully, we'd re-tag that version as a released version (v1.1RC1 -> v1.1) and release that.
Can this be achieved?
From what you are saying, I understand that you are actually afraid of tagging a new version of a library because that code could actually be used and break that other application, right?
One approach would be to do good testing. I don't see it should be a problem to tag a version of a library. If the tests are all green, there should be no reason not to tag it. This would work even if the tests are basically only "let's see if it works, manually".
Now the second step is to integrate that new version into the application: Run composer update and see if the application is still running, i.e. start all the tests and wait for green.
I guess it might be a good idea to have a separate area where you check out the application, intentionally run composer update to fetch all the newest libraries, run all the tests and report that a) there are updates and b) they work. A developer should then confirm the update, i.e. do it again manually and commit the resulting composer.lock file, or grab the resulting lock file from that update test.
I don't think there is benefit in using non-production release versions. You have to deal with the next version anyways - constantly toggling the minimum stability setting or adding #RC or #beta flags to the version requirements of the library don't really help.