[Bug 3779] Addition of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 project and solution files.

[bugzilla-daemon at icculus.org]

http://bugzilla.icculus.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3779





------- Comment #5 from micahc+icculus at gmail.com  2008-11-15 19:50 EDT -------
It appears that bug 3771 and this one are just different points of view as to
what a source tree should contain.

My opinion is that a user should be able to checkout and build without having
to do any setup outside of a normal OS install and compiler install.  I have
heard it argued that even the compiler should be committed to the repository so
the user only has to have an OS and the ability to acquire the source tree.

The approach taken in this bug is not quite that extreme but it does remove all
dependencies besides the OS, IDE and DirectX SDK (which I'm fairly certain is
required, though it comes with many IDE packages).

Bug 3771 takes the approach that only the minimum should be in the repository
and the user is expected to go through a certain amount of setup work prior to
being able to build the code they checked out.

The biggest complaint I have with the instructions linked to in 3771 is that it
requires the user to place some libraries in their path (SDL) which can cause
problems when you are dealing with multiple branches, multiple projects, etc.
that require different versions of the same library.  I much prefer a solution
that allows the user to keep each of their projects isolated from each other to
avoid such problems with libraries.

Another potential solution would be to use SVN externals to point to remote
source repositories for dependencies like SDL, curl, etc. and then create/add
.vcproj and make files for those projects and add them to the various builds. 
SVN externals also allow you to specify a certain revision of the external
repository thus allowing ioQuake to depend on a specific version of SDL, curl,
etc.  Of course, this only works if the dependencies use SVN as their source
control system and it's publicly accessible.

Of course, perhaps it's the desire of the ioQuake maintainers to decrease the
workload on the maintainers and instead increase the workload on the
user/documenter/support personnel.  In my experience the maintainer, documenter
and support personnel is usually the same person and offering increased
simplicity to the user pays off in the end when compared to decreasing the work
required by the maintainer.

All that said, I don't use ioQuake any longer so whichever route the
maintainers of the project decide to take doesn't really affect me at all. :D


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