OpenTF Build Changes

I started the OpenTF project out by copying the Mono Olive tree, and replacing its assemblies and tools with my Team Foundation files. This worked well on *nix, but recently I've been trying to improve support for building on Windows as well.

Should I use cscript, nmake, powershell, BAT, project files, or some combination of these? How could I implement a build solution that didn't just duplicate the same build instructions (source files, references, etc) in 2 different formats: one for windows and one for *nix?

I decided to keep things simple on Windows - just use a VS2005 solution with a bunch of project files. Then for *nix, I decided to make libxslt's xsltproc a build requirement, and generate the list of sources and references for the mono olive make machinery using a few simple XSL stylesheets.

For example, all the .sources files are now generated via build/sources.xsl. Which looks something like this:

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <xsl:apply-templates select="Project/ItemGroup/Compile"/>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="Compile">
    <xsl:value-of select="@Include" /><xsl:text> </xsl:text>
  </xsl:template>

I also have .references files for each assembly, also generated via an XSL file from the .csproj.

Now, I just maintain the VS2005 project files, and leave the *nix build stuff to the stylesheets. I added support for conditional sources using the Conditional attribute. Its working quite well thus far.

Using git-svn with Mono

Why use git to hack on mono?

I've found myself far more productive and make heavy use of feature branches and squashed commits for my day job, so when I hack on mono, I really enjoy being able to leverage the same capabilities.

By "squashed commits", I guess I should really say, leveraging the power of a distributed version control system that lets me break down a task into many smaller steps, commit each step individually, then squashing the whole thing down to one patch that I can post to mono-devel for review.

So do you set things up to use git with Mono?

cd /usr/local/src/
mkdir mono && cd mono
mkdir mcs && cd mcs
git-svn init svn+ssh://username@mono-cvs.ximian.com/source/trunk/mcs
git-svn fetch -r 86200 && git-svn fetch
cd ..
mkdir mono && cd mono
git-svn init svn+ssh://username@mono-cvs.ximian.com/source/trunk/mono
git-svn fetch -r 86200 && git-svn fetch

Note: the above recipe copies the svn history only back to revision 86200. You can pick any valid svn revision number you like, or if you want the full revision history see this page on the Mono wiki.

Ok. Everything's setup. Now what?

First, let's say I want to hack on some ASP.NET ashx page bug. I'll setup a local branch "ashx" to store whatever code I write/change:

git-checkout -b ashx

Now I have two branches: "master" which was setup by git-svn above, and "ashx" which I just created and switched over to. Now, I can:

emacs -nw class/System.Web/...
git-commit -a -m "1st step"
emacs -nw class/System.Web/...
git-commit -a -m "2nd step"
emacs -nw class/System.Web/...
git-commit -a -m "3rd step"

Ok, now to post a message to mono-devel:

git-diff master ashx > ~/Bug6884.fix
mutt

When everything looks good and no one has any complaints, I can finally commit back to mono's svn repository with:

git-branch master
git-pull --squash --summary . ashx
git-commit -a -m "message for mono's svn"
git-svn dcommit

This "squashes" my commits down into one batch of changes on the master branch, which I then commit and push to svn repo.

Finally, How do I update my local tree?

git-svn fetch && git-svn rebase remotes/git-svn

Note: This will update the current branch you are on locally.

Hope someone finds this helpful!