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https://github.com/xolox/lua-buildbot

A build bot for popular Lua projects (Lua 5.1, LuaJIT 1 & LuaJIT 2)
https://github.com/xolox/lua-buildbot

Last synced: 6 days ago
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A build bot for popular Lua projects (Lua 5.1, LuaJIT 1 & LuaJIT 2)

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# A build bot for popular Lua projects



Lots of [Lua](http://lua.org/) projects (including Lua itself and [LuaJIT](http://luajit.org/)) only release source code archives and expect users to build the project. On UNIX this is not really a problem but on Windows this can pose a significant hurdle for potential users. My Lua build bot is an attempt to solve this problem. While developing this build bot I took the following points into consideration:



 * I've had bad experiences with cross compilation so I prefer to build Windows binaries on Windows

 * I don't actually have any Windows machines and don't feel like setting one up just for this build bot

 * I want to be able to run the build bot from a cron job so it can automatically build all projects once a week



## Status



### Project discontinued



I'm sorry to say that this project has been discontinued. My reasons for this are as follows (the below points are my opinions, I don't necessarily expect anyone to agree with them):



 * **I stopped using Windows, in fact I abandoned the complete Microsoft software stack**



   * One reason for this is that I consider the Microsoft stack very unfriendly to developers who are (like me) oriented toward command line automation.



   * Another reason is the fact that quite a few of Microsoft's build tools are commercially licensed and have restrictions on redistribution of software built using them.



   * I switched away from Microsoft Windows for personal use years ago and paying for a new license with every Microsoft Windows release just to keep this Lua build bot running feels absurd to me.



   * As a more general point, I don't like where the development of Microsoft and Windows have been heading in the past couple of years.



 * **I more or less stopped using Lua for personal projects :-(**



   * When I originally fell in love with Lua the language I quickly got frustrated by the surrounding ecosystem because I wanted to use Lua as a general purpose language (admittedly not its original purpose).



     * Out of frustration I started working on [Lua/APR] [lua_apr] to provide myself with a more generally useful "standard library" of operating system interfaces.



     * When I started developing Lua/APR I seriously underestimated my knowledge of [low level systems programming] [c], this is why it took me years to get the project to a state where I could be proud of it.



     * In the end I did get quite far with Lua/APR, eventually presenting it at the [Lua Workshop 2011] [workshop] and having it [included in Debian] [debian].



   * Having Lua/APR available for operating system interfacing was nice, but what I really wanted from my favorite programming language was a rich ecosystem of bindings and packages. Even after creating Lua/APR I still regularly fell into the trap of wanting and not finding bindings to shared libraries. Creating such bindings for every project you want to work on quickly gets tiresome.



   * Starting from 2011 I got a full time job working as a software engineer and later system administrator (DevOps) working on Python projects and this slowly but surely pulled me away from the world of Lua. If you look at [my GitHub profile] [github_profile] now (in 2015) you'll see what I mean :-).



For now, given this extensive explanation, I will keep the repository online, maybe it can serve as inspiration to others. Or who knows, maybe I'll find a way to run Windows legally without paying for licenses and I can find a way to revive the build bot (no promises though). I still love Lua the language, so there's one thing :-).



### To-do list



The following stuff has not yet been implemented but is on the to-do list:



 * Make the build bot **test the binaries** using a test suite of some sort; if everything is going to be automated I have to know that the binaries I'm publishing actually work

 * Deploy the build bot and virtual machine to one of my servers and **run the build bot from a daily cron job**?

 * **Use LuaRocks to build Lua modules**: currently the build bot uses custom batch scripts to build Lua modules, but of course a generic solution is preferable!

    * While adding support for the LuaSocket module I was curious enough to try if `luarocks install luasocket` would work in my environment but it doesn't; `msbuild` complains that the project files are incompatible

 * **Support for Mac binaries?** This requires someone to run the build bot periodically on their Mac, because I don't have access to any Mac machines



## Downloads



The following packages have been built by the Lua build bot:



### Implementations of Lua



 ReleaseSizeSHA1 hash

 Lua 5.1.4234Kb312a0f67fae85d0969edcccee3df3bb27b6c228

 LuaJIT 1.1.7255Kf58c039e0a890601d44f7026f36ed7e9a9de0990

 LuaJIT 2.0.0 beta 8269K7b3f8a8c4788e67c737137e69c9bbe39ba183410



### Lua modules



 ReleaseSizeSHA1 hash

 LPeg 0.10.289K159a31446cc4c0f3a28e892c2c61d4bac52f25ee

 LuaSocket 2.0.2126Ka6a8fe0763cd21160c4cde2f6da8df5095851c36

 LuaFileSystem 1.5.070K9c482f761d4e7624215b62e0b807a59ff44a3309



## How it works



Right now the build bot is meant to be run on my machine because it works in a very specific way, however I'm planning to make it more generally useful (and with a bit of persistence it should already be possible for other folks to get it running). At the moment I run the build bot as follows:



 * I start the build bot script from a terminal on my [Ubuntu Linux](http://www.ubuntu.com/) installation

 * The build bot starts a headless virtual machine running Windows using [VirtualBox](http://www.virtualbox.org/)

    * The virtual machine has been specifically setup for the build bot (see below)

    * When the virtual machine boots it automatically launches the build bot

 * When the build bot is executed on Windows it performs the following steps for each project:

    * Find latest available release from homepage

    * Download archive (if not already downloaded)

    * Unpack and build project

    * Copy files to be released (binaries & headers)

 * When the build bot was executed automatically on Windows, it will shut the virtual machine down



As I mentioned above the plan is to run the build bot from a cron job on a server, this is still a work in progress.



## Dependencies in the VM



In order to run the build bot on Windows I installed the following software in the virtual machine:



 * Windows XP SP3

 * The latest [Windows Platform SDK](http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8279) (7.1)

 * [Lua For Windows](http://code.google.com/p/luaforwindows/) (v5.1.4-45)

 * My [Lua/APR binding](http://peterodding.com/code/lua/apr) (0.20)

 * `gunzip`, `tar`, `wget` and `unzip` from [UnxUtils](http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/)



I'm not publishing the virtual machine image because it was registered with my serial number and of course it's quite big (more than 2 GB). However it's not hard to create the virtual machine, it just takes a bit of time. Apart from installing the software mentioned above, there are only two things to configure in the virtual machine:



 * Inside the virtual machine I've mounted a shared folder as a network drive, this enables the two build bots to easily exchange files

 * After creating the network drive I added `buildbot.cmd` to my Start → Programs → Startup menu so that the build bot runs automatically after the VM is started and shuts down the VM after building all projects



## Contact



If you have questions, bug reports, suggestions, etc. the author can be contacted at . The latest version is available at  and .



## License



This software is licensed under the [MIT license](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License).  

© 2011 Peter Odding <>.



### Disclaimers



 * This license only applies to the build bot itself -- I don't have any affiliation with the projects supported by the build bot, I'm just a happy user

 * Should the original authors have objections against this build bot, let me know and I will remove support for the project in question

 * I don't give any guarantees as to the published binaries. They're generated in a dedicated machine so it's very unlikely that a virus could sneak in, but you never know until you've [scanned the binaries yourself](http://www.virustotal.com/)...



[c]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language)

[debian]: https://packages.debian.org/lua-apr

[github_profile]: https://github.com/xolox/

[lua_apr]: https://github.com/xolox/lua-apr

[workshop]: http://www.lua.org/wshop11/Lua-APR.pdf