[p4] encapsulation of third party software

[Albrecht, Matt]

An interesting question.  My company is encountering the same thing,
where advances in technology and installed software mean that older
builds simply won't work on modern systems.  For example, Apache Ant 1.5
doesn't work on Windows Server 2003, but some of our current dependent
software need the upgraded OS.

To solve this, we've planned (note: not implemented) on running our
formal build environments inside Virtual PC or VMWare.  This would allow
us to keep a history and easily reproducable build environment.  It
means, however, that to reproduce an older build, it wouldn't be as easy
as syncing to a point in Perforce and building; we'll have to restore
the image for that point in time then kick off the build.  For some
shops, I suppose you could store the VM image in Perforce and remove
that extra step.

There are other technical issues with this that we're still trying to
resolve, but for the moment it's the only one that seems to solve the
problems of being able to accurately restore a build environment.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com 
> [mailto:perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com] On Behalf Of 
> Monica Sanchez
> Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 1:49 PM
> To: perforce-user at perforce.com
> Subject: [p4] encapsulation of third party software
> 
> Hi,
> 
>  
> 
> This question is not 100% related to perforce but to the OS. 
> Most of my
> experience is with UNIX systems, but I'm working with Windows now and
> I'll like to know how you manage the third party software. My 
> main goal
> is to identify and manage tools that "maybe" affect the OS directories
> for DLLs and libraries files.
> 
>  
> 
> While I was working on UNIX I had this big application file system,
> where most of the applications were installed and all the 
> users run this
> application from the same place.
> 
>  
> 
> Using Windows, most of the tools affect user account, OS 
> directories and
> also the registry.
> 
>  
> 
> My goal is to implement a process where I can come back to previous
> releases, just sync the source from perforce and then be able to build
> them.
> 
> Our build process is now defining system and registry 
> variables, so I'll
> have not problems with the path or any other variable.
> 
>  
> 
> How do you manage these tools for previous releases?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Monica
> 
>  
> 
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