Re: Jam, Visual Studio, XBox 360

[I wanted to write more about this, but I see you've already got the correct suggestions :). So just this...]

> problem I now have, is although this system is able to generate both Wii
> and Win32 in one solution, the Wii will not build, as I have set it up
> to add itself as another platform (in the dropdown box with Win32, Xbox
> 360, x64, and so on) but Visual Studio (2005 and 2008) appear to not
> like building any platforms except ones MS has added.

What we do is to have a configuration file called .jamlocalconfig in the solution root (user-local, not submitted), which is read by the jam scripts.

For the above problem we use:

PlatformRemap-Win32 = Linux ;

which self-explains the way it works. :)

Other useful ones include:

JOBS = 3 ;
INSTRUMENTEDBUILD = 1 ;
XENON_DEPLOY_TARGETS =  myxbox ;

etc, etc.

Btw, we haven't switched to JamPlus yet, but use our own customized Jam with home-brew Lua scripts that generate vcprojs, similar to what Grant described earlier. But I guess it would still apply.

HTH,
Alen



Monday, February 8, 2010, 10:34:20 PM, you wrote:

> Thanks for your reply. Someone has suggested I check out JamPlus, which
> is able to generate a Visual Studio solution that builds with a Jamfile.
> I have also managed to add the Wii platform into a Jamfile, so I can
> generate a Visual Studio solution that builds on either Wii or Win32.  I presume the only
> work around for this is to generate a lot of configurations like:

> Win32_Debug|Win32
> Win32_Release|Win32
> Wii_Debug|Win32
> Wii_Relase|Win32
> PS3_Debug|Win32
> PS3_Release|Win32
> 360_Debug|Win32 *
> 360_Release|Win32       *

> *Although the two 360 configurations could use '360_Debug|Xbox 360' and
> '360_Release|Xbox 360' respectively. This isn't an overly neat solution,
> and I'm not actually sure if it is possible at all with JamPlus (I'm not
> sure if you can set up debug/release style configurations that build on
> completely different platforms). It seems MS has added custom platform
> support for Visual Studio 2010 - but right now nothing seems to quite
> fit together.

> Any clues? I guess I could do a custom parse at the end of this process,
> to fix up the .sln/.vcproj so the platform/configuration names are
> 'valid', but at that stage I'd start to question whether I'd be better
> off just rolling my own code to do the lot from scratch (rather than
> rely on third party code to do half the job, and try to pick up the
> pieces after).

> Steve

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
> Grant Mark
> Sent: 08 February 2010 17:04
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [Sweng-Gamedev] Jam, Visual Studio, XBox 360

> Hi Steve,

> While we don't actually use Jam, our build pipeline is similar to what
> you're trying to achieve:
>  * Visual Studio project generated for all target platforms/configs (ie.
> debug|win, debug|x360, and so on)
>  * "Unity" source code collation
>  * Distributed builds using Incredibuild (win/x360) and SN-DBS (ps3).

> The Visual Studio project files themselves are not in source control -
> users
> are expected to generate this locally on their machine using our tools.
> The
> Visual Studio project file is a fairly flexible XML document which
> allows
> you to provide per-platform and per-config compiler and linker settings,
> so
> you can maintain all of your config/platform-specific settings. I
> imagine
> there is some sturdy MSDN documentation on it... (:-/)

> Essentially our tool scans the source folder for cpp files and collates
> them
> into large "unity" cpp files (ie. a cpp file that includes individual
> project cpp files), then spits out a .sln and .vcproj. The generated
> vcproj
> will compile only these files; the actual individual files are added as
> well, but are flagged as "Excluded from project". The magic is all in
> the
> generation of the sln/proj file, which uses additional "template" files
> where our platform/config specific settings are defined. 

> With that in place, we're able to launch the same builds from within
> Visual
> Studio or from the command-line (buildconsole.exe for Incredibuild,
> vsibuild.exe for SN-DBS) - both have their own parameters but it
> basically
> boils down to the same thing: <solution file> <config|platform>
> <project>
> <build/rebuild>.

> Whenever someone adds a new file to the project, they are free to check
> it
> in without having to modify any project or solution files. Whenever
> someone
> grabs the latest revision, they'll need to regenerate their project to
> have
> any new files automatically inserted into their unity cpp's. If they
> don't,
> the errors are fairly obvious (linker or file not found on #include are
> the
> typical ones). 

> Having never actually used Jam, I'm not sure where it'd fit in to the
> above
> equation - you may be able to use it to emulate our sln/vcproj
> generation
> step somehow?

> Sorry if that's not specific enough but I can't go into too much detail
> unfortunately. Hope that's of some use.

> Cheers,
> Grant

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
> Craft,
> Steven
> Sent: 08 February 2010 10:07
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: [Sweng-Gamedev] Jam, Visual Studio, XBox 360

> Hi there,

> I have seen some discussions touching on this area, but instead of
> hijack said threads I thought I'd start a new one. I currently have to
> maintain two (main) code building pipelines, one Visual Studio based
> (for PC and 360), and one Makefile based (for Wii and PS3). I am
> considering giving Incredibuild a go (I have about 50 programmers here,
> and lots of non programmers, so a lot of cumulative processing power)
> and have read Bizarre Creations case study of how they used Incredibuild
> in conjunction with Jam to give them a unified build environment across
> multiple platforms, including the ability to generate Visual Studio
> projects from their jamfiles. I was wondering if anyone else does this?
> I was interesting in whether this can be done with already available
> software, or if they had to write their own. I'd be particularly
> interested if it is possible to have this setup in a way that the Visual
> Studio projects generated are good enough for submission, and include
> the ability to set all the optimization options and so forth. Bizarre do
> not list Wii as a platform they have integrated in this way, but
> certainly I am very keen on finding a solution that works for all
> platforms, and allows the end user to build for any platform using the
> same system. So with Jam I'd like Visual Studio to call that when you
> click build, and also be able to call Jam from the command line for
> constant integration/disc build systems.

> I don't really want many users messing around with project specific
> settings, the only main change most users need to make to the build
> system is adding new source files (as they introduce them), and I can
> see with Jam it is quite straight forward to separate out this part of
> the build from the compiler settings and so on, so that's good. If they
> could update that file, and then regenerate the Visual Studio project
> files and carry on working, that'd be good.

> Also, if anyone has an opinion on Jam in general, I'd like to hear them!

> Best regards,

> Steve

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-- 
Best regards,
 Alen                            mailto:[email protected]

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