[GITHUB] Add weekly pre-releases workflow for Generals and GeneralsMD #929

fbraz3 · 2025-05-24T19:09:41Z

What this PR does?

This PR complements #1171

Creates a github action to create a weekly release with the latest code changes. It will be scheduled to every moday.

https://github.com/fbraz3/GeneralsGameCode/actions/runs/15689781515

It also can be mannualy triggered, and it have parameters to bypass the code changes check to force a new build

The release notes also have a changelog with all commits since the last release - for the first release it will be limited to the last 10 commits

xezon · 2025-05-24T19:29:03Z

What does this change produce then?

roossienb · 2025-05-24T19:50:31Z

If these are our 'official' pre-releases then they need to be properly versions.

fbraz3 · 2025-05-24T20:05:13Z

If these are our 'official' pre-releases then they need to be properly versions.

I can adjust for a semVer schema if it looks better.

fbraz3 · 2025-05-24T20:07:12Z

What does this change produce then?

It will produce zip files weekly with the main executables for generals, worldbuilder and w3dview both for both games.

roossienb · 2025-05-25T12:37:42Z

If these are our 'official' pre-releases then they need to be properly versions.

I can adjust for a semVer schema if it looks better.

It's not about looking better, it's about having traceability when somebody reports an issue or bug.

fbraz3 · 2025-05-25T22:42:00Z

@xezon @roossienb I’ve just updated the pull request to use semantic versioning.

The version is now based on .github/workflows/base-version.txt and the patch level is incremented automatically at build time.

When the project is ready for a stable release, we just need to update the version file to 1.0.

I ran the workflow on my fork and everything went smoothly:
https://github.com/fbraz3/GeneralsGameCode/actions/runs/15241083502
https://github.com/fbraz3/GeneralsGameCode/releases

roossienb · 2025-06-02T19:42:44Z

In a discussion with @Mauller he told me that they did nightly builds in which they used the latest commit number as the build number in the application. This makes it easy to track back.

fbraz3 · 2025-06-04T03:52:53Z

In a discussion with @Mauller he told me that they did nightly builds in which they used the latest commit number as the build number in the application. This makes it easy to track back.

It’s fine to change the logic to whatever is needed. But just need to decide what will be the pattern.

All approaches have its own pros and cons. Using latest commit it’s a good approach but we can get more than one commit in a day, and this would be a problem to track anyway.

What about to mix the approaches like 0.9.{commit_id} or 0.9.{release_date} ?

roossienb · 2025-06-04T18:01:09Z

I think most important is that the version is also shown in-game (so when you open the options menu, in the bottom).

fbraz3 · 2025-06-04T19:46:58Z

I think most important is that the version is also shown in-game (so when you open the options menu, in the bottom).

I totally agree with you. But I don’t have enough knowledge in C language. Can you guys help me to do that?

OmniBlade · 2025-06-09T10:04:52Z

I don't think it should have a proper version number tag, only official releases should get a version tag and otherwise should show the commit and if the tree was dirty when it was built. Vanilla Conquer uses a GitWatcher cmake module to populate the variables used to configure this file which is then referred to when configuring the version.

fbraz3 · 2025-06-10T16:52:25Z

I don't think it should have a proper version number tag, only official releases should get a version tag and otherwise should show the commit and if the tree was dirty when it was built. Vanilla Conquer uses a GitWatcher cmake module to populate the variables used to configure this file which is then referred to when configuring the version.

I think I’m getting close to add the build version to game.

I believe in a few days I will be able to update this pr with the modifications.

fbraz3 · 2025-06-12T19:58:30Z

@xezon @roossienb @OmniBlade @tintinhamans

I've update the first comment of this PR with the latest changes.

Caball009 · 2025-06-18T01:37:21Z

Generals/Code/GameEngine/Source/GameClient/GUI/GUICallbacks/Menus/OptionsMenu.cpp

-		GadgetStaticTextSetText( labelVersion, versionString );
+		UnicodeString fullVersion;
+        fullVersion.format(L"%s - TheSuperHackers %s", versionString.str(), SUPERHACKERS_VERSION_WIDE);
+        GadgetStaticTextSetText(labelVersion, fullVersion);


Could you make the indentation of all 3 lines match the removed line? Same for the Zero Hour file.

I use spaces instead of tabs for indentation in IntelliJ, so it looks aligned to me. I’ve just updated it to replace the spaces with tabs again.

xezon · 2025-06-18T17:36:18Z

Please move the version change to a new Pull Request because it is not related to pre-releases workflow.

This relates to task #1010

xezon · 2025-06-18T17:37:18Z

I don't think we have anyone active right now who can review this CI stuff.

fbraz3 · 2025-06-19T19:39:43Z

I don't think we have anyone active right now who can review this CI stuff.

I work as a devops for many years, maybe I can help the project on CI reviews.

I'm also have a few ideas for a more standard gitflow and release process

fbraz3 · 2025-06-19T19:44:02Z

Please move the version change to a new Pull Request because it is not related to pre-releases workflow.

This relates to task #1010

Will work on that this weekend.

… builds

fbraz3 · 2025-06-22T19:30:26Z

@xezon @roossienb @OmniBlade @tintinhamans @Mauller

moved the game logic changes to a new PR as requested: #1171

OmniBlade · 2025-06-23T16:02:10Z

Do we need the text file? Can't it calculate based on the last tag in git for the change log and then just set the release tag to something like "weekly-dd:mm:yy"? That will nicely separate it from full release versions that can use semver when we ge to that point?

prettyblueberry · 2025-06-23T18:18:49Z

How can I play the pr-release build with GenLauncher to play a mod?

fbraz3 · 2025-06-23T23:32:47Z

How can I play the pr-release build with GenLauncher to play a mod?

use my fork for now.
https://github.com/fbraz3/GeneralsGameCode/releases

prettyblueberry · 2025-06-24T01:17:19Z

use my fork for now.

I tried already pre-release build of your fork. I replaced generals.exe and modded.exe in working genlauncher directory, but the genlauncher didn't run a mod correctly.
Could you try to run genlauncher using your build for RotR or TEOD mod?

fbraz3 · 2025-06-24T02:43:03Z

use my fork for now.

I tried already pre-release build of your fork. I replaced generals.exe and modded.exe in working genlauncher directory, but the genlauncher didn't run a mod correctly. Could you try to run genlauncher using your build for RotR or TEOD mod?

My build uses the exact same code from SuperHacker's repository. Please open an issue for further analysis.

xezon · 2025-06-24T08:23:48Z

@OmniBlade can you review this?

xezon

Thank you for the images. The resulting Release overview looks pretty good. Perhaps we can name this "Preview Version" instead of "Pre-Release"? Basically we want to communicate that auto published versions are not hand picked final releases and can contain side effects.

xezon · 2025-06-24T08:24:59Z

.github/workflows/base-version.txt

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+0.9.1


Why was this version value chosen?

It's just a random value and can be set whatever we want to.

OmniBlade

I think there needs to be some thought as to how these releases are differentiated from our "official" releases. As I've already commented, I think semver should be reserved for final release versions.

I also don't get what the vesion text files get us that can't be just stored in git itself as tags?

OmniBlade · 2025-06-24T09:36:31Z

.github/workflows/base-version.txt

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+0.9.1


I think this versioning should be left out of the weekly builds completely personally.

I agree. We can make the versioning enterily independent of the CI.

OmniBlade · 2025-06-24T10:00:54Z

.github/workflows/weekly-release.yml

+            echo "changed=true" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
+          fi
+
+  calculate-version:


What benefit do we get creating these files to be moved around rather than just calculating the information and storing it in variables where the workflow requires it?

This is needed by build-toolchain and will be used in C++ counterpart here and here

xezon · 2025-06-24T11:53:11Z

I do think our previews and releases should only contain the vc6 + tools builds, no win32, no extras. Because the win32 is not meant to be used by players at this time.

fbraz3 · 2025-06-25T18:31:10Z

What about this approach?

Generate a file on the GitHub Actions side to populate the version.

This is already happening in the weekly build — we just need to add it to the CI process as well.
The C++ code will read this file and display its contents as-is.

This allows us to:

Generate weekly releases with custom names (e.g., pre-release, preview, etc.)
Add a CI build step to populate the version file with the current commit ID
Add a form field for manual releases to override the version string

xezon · 2025-06-25T21:04:03Z

If the CMake can generate the version, then is it fine to use that instead?

fbraz3 · 2025-06-25T21:56:43Z

If the CMake can generate the version, then is it fine to use that instead?

Although I don’t have experience in c/c++ coding, I can try to do it.

What will be the version pattern? Just the git version?

xezon · 2025-06-25T21:59:27Z

I can do that, because I already have all the code here to facilitate this.

fbraz3 · 2025-06-26T02:07:38Z

I can do that, because I already have all the code here to facilitate this.

Great!

Just to make sure we're on the same page, for this PR I need to:

Remove the version generation logic from weekly-release
Roll back the version logic in build-toolchain
Change the release title format to preview-YYYY-mm-dd
Remove the Win32 builds

Anything else?

xezon · 2025-07-06T13:38:38Z

Yes that would be good.

So for versioning I have prepared change #1219 that uses a CMake script to generate an additional git version file for C++ which looks like so:

GeneralsGameCode/resources/gitinfo/gitinfo.cpp.in

Lines 20 to 28 in 0f0352e

    
           const char GitSHA1[] = "@GIT_HEAD_SHA1@"; 
        
           const char GitShortSHA1[] = "@GIT_HEAD_SHORT_SHA1@"; 
        
           const char GitCommitDate[] = "@GIT_COMMIT_DATE_ISO8601@"; 
        
           const char GitCommitAuthorName[] = "@GIT_AUTHOR_NAME@"; 
        
           const char GitTag[] = "@GIT_TAG@"; 
        
           time_t GitCommitTimeStamp = @GIT_COMMIT_TSTAMP@; 
        
           bool GitUncommittedChanges = @GIT_IS_DIRTY@; 
        
           bool GitHaveInfo = @GIT_RETRIEVED_STATE@; 
        
           int GitRevision = @GIT_REV_LIST_COUNT@;

We can generate another version of this in CMake that the CI could read, in Json format or just Plain text: whatever works.

Additionally we write game version information in

GeneralsGameCode/GeneralsMD/Code/Main/CMakeLists.txt

Lines 30 to 47 in 477be26

    
           file(WRITE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/GeneratedVersion.h 
        
           "#pragma once 
        
           #define VERSION_LOCALBUILDNUM 0 
        
           #define VERSION_BUILDUSER \"Someone\" 
        
           #define VERSION_BUILDLOC \"Someplace\" 
        
           " 
        
           ) 
        
           # Based on original binary values for these variables. 
        
           file(WRITE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/BuildVersion.h 
        
           "#pragma once 
        
           #define VERSION_MAJOR 1 
        
           #define VERSION_MINOR 4 
        
           #define VERSION_BUILDNUM 601 
        
           " 
        
           )

For in game versioning, I currently settled on:

Version VERSION_MAJOR.VERSION_MINOR R @GIT_REV_LIST_COUNT@ By VERSION_BUILDUSER

Which in turn should look like so:

Version 1.04 R 550 By The Super Hackers

For VERSION_BUILDUSER we do not yet have logic in place to actually generated the string from CI. So that is something we would need to add (in this change).

I think CI needs to:

Tell CMake what the VERSION_BUILDUSER should be before generating CMake
Build the games with CMake
Read relevant files that CMake has generated to get game version information

Do you think you can work with this information? Do you need assistance? I can help with the CMake side of things.

I think we need to finalize #1219 first.

xezon requested a review from tintinhamans May 24, 2025 19:14

xezon added Major Severity: Minor < Major < Critical < Blocker Build Anything related to building, compiling labels May 24, 2025

fbraz3 force-pushed the weekly-release branch from 5deb762 to 8bf3e71 Compare May 24, 2025 19:36

fbraz3 force-pushed the weekly-release branch 4 times, most recently from d248576 to b668cf2 Compare May 25, 2025 18:35

fbraz3 force-pushed the weekly-release branch 5 times, most recently from 09d1dd0 to a801bfb Compare June 10, 2025 00:58

fbraz3 force-pushed the weekly-release branch from 034939d to 517791e Compare June 12, 2025 00:26

OmarAglan mentioned this pull request Jun 12, 2025

[GitHub] Uploads the Build Artifacts To Simple Website Using GitHub P… #910

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fbraz3 force-pushed the weekly-release branch from 517791e to 029b6fb Compare June 12, 2025 14:09

fbraz3 force-pushed the weekly-release branch from 029b6fb to df20da3 Compare June 16, 2025 19:09

Caball009 reviewed Jun 18, 2025

View reviewed changes

fbraz3 force-pushed the weekly-release branch 2 times, most recently from fc02c01 to 813798a Compare June 18, 2025 17:29

fbraz3 requested a review from Caball009 June 18, 2025 17:32

fbraz3 mentioned this pull request Jun 22, 2025

[GEN][ZH] Add TheSuperHackers version to options screen #1171

Open

fbraz3 force-pushed the weekly-release branch from 813798a to fdccbb1 Compare June 22, 2025 19:16

[GITHUB] Add weekly pre-releases workflow for Generals and GeneralsMD…

04fce5a

… builds

fbraz3 force-pushed the weekly-release branch from fdccbb1 to 04fce5a Compare June 22, 2025 19:27

xezon requested a review from OmniBlade June 24, 2025 08:23

xezon reviewed Jun 24, 2025

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OmniBlade requested changes Jun 24, 2025

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roossienb mentioned this pull request Jul 4, 2025

Create guide for getting the pre-built binaries TheSuperHackers/GeneralsWiki#46

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		@@ -0,0 +1 @@
		0.9.1

		@@ -0,0 +1 @@
		0.9.1

[GITHUB] Add weekly pre-releases workflow for Generals and GeneralsMD #929

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