Duality v4.0 Release Schedule

Summary

This is an aggregate issue to reflect what still needs to be done before Duality v4.0 can be released, intended to roughly list points that did not make it into their own issues yet. Some of these points may already be done partially or fully and are listed to verify their current state.

The intent of this is to answer and evolve the question “where are we on this?”, and act as an internal roadmap and discussion platform for v4.0.

Analysis

• Move the DualityProjectTemplate that we’ll bundle in the download .zip to somewhere inside this repo.
  • Consider adding an automated .zip pack step in some .csproj, like it was done for the now obsolete embedded GamePluginTemplate, so it doesn’t need to be zipped manually for release.
  • Remove the now obsolete “package .zip” build step from NightlyBuilder.
• Do some extended testing with the template to make sure everything works and is reasonably polished.
  • Consider releasing a set of 4.0-beta pre-release packages and a 4.0-beta download .zip that can be used by developers and the community early adopters for testing prior to release.
• Update the download link subdomain to always point to the latest release download, see here.
• Add a v4 docs folder including any required page updates and a new changelog page, see issue #799 for that.
• Consider to also do and bundle any other (breaking) changes that would require a major version step, preferably those that would benefit from the netstandard 2.0 / C# 7.3 upgrade.
  • We don’t have an issue for that yet, but RawList<T> for example could use an API upgrade with a ref-return indexer, and so on.
  • Nothing specific required here, but it would be a good opportunity. Also, this should probably be in beta for a while, and if we’re waiting for release anyway, why not do something useful with the time 😄
• Eventually, when all is tested and done, bump all package versions to 4.0 and merge into release.
  • Might have to update the version updater behavior to deal with previous pre-release beta versions properly when used with ApplyGlobalUpdate=Major as a command line parameter. Right now, it doesn’t really support pre-release versions or considers them at all.
  • Alternatively, just do it manually - it’s “all packages or none” anyway.

Feel free to move any of those into their own separate milestone issue, then comment here with an updated list that links to it, or crosses it off.

[Barsonax]

Without the .sln, that installation flow is less intuitive, because you have to (albeit very briefly) start digging to discover it. This one thing is what I’d address before the alpha release - other than that I’m totally giving this a go 👍 Really looking forward to this.

Makes sense, I just put it in source as all source files are there but having the sln in the root does make commandline usage easier (can just run dotnet build from the root without any path). DONE

On that note, I don’t think we ever tested the NightlyBuilder with pre-release versions. Just to be sure, before merging into release, please do a full local re/build and then locally run the Build\Scripts\Package Binary CI Script.bat script on your machine first, and ensure all packages are built as expected.

We have been testing locally with 4.0.0-alpha for a while now on master and seems to work just fine after I fixed it in https://github.com/AdamsLair/duality/commit/7af3efcd75ceb873bf5243e6656b1911a3f66b11

Can we flag that one as alpha as well? If yes, then I’m all for it 👍

Ofcourse in the end its just another nuget package. In fact at this moment it uses 4.0.0-alpha as the version.

For the future, the CI build should pick up on the project and release the package as well. One way to achieve this would be to add a .nuspec to the Build/NuGetPackageSpecs folder, in which case the NightlyBuilder will pick it up. Alternatively, you can configure the project so that a regular build will create a .nupkg that ends up in Build\NightlyBuild\NuGetPackages, which is where the CI script gathers build artifacts.

I can turn generate package on build on and let it output to Build\NightlyBuild\NuGetPackages. Its the easiest way to do it. DONE

Oh, and one more thing. Even if that’s just for my personal peace of mind, after the v4.0-alpha pre-release, please do a brief test whether the existing v3.x binary release still works with a fresh install + DualStickSpaceShooter via builtin package manager.

Since the 3.x package manager completely ignores prerelease packages anyway its not even possible to install 4.0.0-alpha even if you really wanted to 😛. This is one of the features we gain in 4.0.0 since we are now able to install prerelease packages as well if we want it.

[ilexp]

Updated the generic download link (https://get.duality2d.net/) that is used on the website and potentially everywhere else from redirecting to the v3 download to this:

https://github.com/AdamsLair/duality/releases/latest/download/Duality.zip

which will always redirect to the latest release on the GitHub repo. Only requirement for it to work is that the attached binary zip is called Duality.zip.