Some of you may have noticed a lack of OSX binary updates for pioneer space sim lately, and you would be correct with that observation.
With releases in the past, a .dmg file was manually generated on the 2nd Friday of every month, and the occasional ‘nightly’ builds were generated during the rest of the month.
The last .dmg file that was uploaded was back in April 2013 (tagged ‘alpha 33’) and there hasn’t been an OSX binary uploaded since.
So why the lack of OSX binary updates?
Back in May 2013, the pioneer core development team had decided to change the release process to accommodate a more automated system of releases. The monthly freeze cycle just wasn’t working. There just wasn’t enough people to test the builds, and often a release would be followed up quickly by a patch to correct it. I fully support this new plan, and have been in talks with RobN on its impact for the OSX builds as I am currently the only one who can create them.
What does that mean for OSX binaries?
It currently means that there are no new app bundles for the time being until an automatic build process is created. The problem with the old process was that by using Xcode to build the application bundle, it was very brittle to new source file additions/deletions and with a fast dynamic project like pioneer. It was very easy for the XCode project file to become broken between git merges.
The new method is to ditch XCode and use the standard build tools (such as automake, etc). The trade off with this though is that the entire application bundle needs to be created manually and all the ‘magic’ that XCode does needs to be re-engineered.
Hopefully when this is done should solve the lack of OSX binary updates by matching the Windows and Linux build scripts.
Why not just manually create an application bundle as you did before?
Believe me, if I had the time I would. There are currently 2 nightly builds each day and the current app bundle build process is still a manual process (especially when new source code files are added to the project, the XCode project file breaks and I have to manually add the files, recompile and test).
Please be patient, or even better yet if you have ideas on how to create app bundles manually then please give us a hand, I could use some help.
The project is hosted at GitHub