So, another month, another kdesvn-build release, right?
Well, except that I’ve finally attached that beloved of version numbers, 1.0, to the end of the program’s name. What does this mean? Well, it probably means to expect 1.0.1 in a few days, knowing my luck. ;-)
On a more serious note, there’s a couple of cool new features I implemented. The coolest for those kdesvn-build users who don’t speak English natively is that kdesvn-build supports the l10n module finally, meaning that you can use kdesvn-build to download, build, and install a KDE translation along with the rest of your KDE build. Look for the “kde-languages” option.
What may be even more awesome, however, is that kdesvn-build supports the Subversion snapshot tarballs from the kdesvn-build website. What does this mean for you? It means that, on initial module checkout, if kdesvn-build.kde.org has a snapshot for your module and branch, kdesvn-build will automatically download it, extract it, and do all the neat little tricks required to turn it into a real live Subversion checkout. Only, without actually going through all the time of a real Subversion checkout.
This is much quicker for you, and has the potential to ease the strain on KDE’s Subversion servers. I ran the old version of kdesvn-build and compared it against the new version. The old version simply performed a checkout of arts. The new version used the snapshot of arts from revision 457934 (The Subversion repo was up to around 504000 at the time), and updated from the snapshot to get the latest arts. Both versions ended up with the same source checkout, at the same revision.
Here’s the times:
| kdesvn-build version | Time required to download arts-3.5 (seconds) |
|---|---|
| 1.0 | 22.2 |
| 0.98.2 | 58.2 |
This includes the time necessary to cleanup. But, it doesn’t take into account the fact that arts wasn’t heavily modified after 457934. Modules like kdelibs and kdebase would probably show closer relative times if I allow their snapshots to become as comparatively out-of-date as arts’s was.
What I didn’t realize beforehand was how long it would take to actually release this. There’s websites you have to update. In my case, kdesvn-build.kde.org obviously, followed by my personal homepage, and then the entry at kde-apps.org. But that’s not all. I mailed kde-announce@kde.org so that the release would be picked up by websites all around the world (but especially to add to the KDE releases section on LWN.net’s Weekly News. ;-). I also finally created an entry for kdesvn-build at the famous freshmeat.net. We’ll see how important that is.
Finally, I just had to post about this on my blog to tell Planet KDE. If you find that kdesvn-build just doesn’t work for whatever reason, please let me know, or post a bug at bugs.kde.org. I’m trying to keep my streak of consecutive releases without a brown-paper-bag flaw alive.