2007-09-21 : Sometime in septembre, my build machine hard drive started having some problems (severe enough so that Windows would no longer boot). However, I managed to recover most of the information on it. I have rebuilt the snapshots from that date. But until I can get a new dedicated machine running to do that, I'll be doing the snapshots manually (this means they may not show up as timely as before). As an addition, I also added the PCRE libraries, meaning Fish's HAO feature should now work with the snapshots !
2006-10-09 : At the general demand, source snapshots have been added. Note that the snapshot generation wasn't done backwards, so the source snapshots are only available since today. Since the source snapshot is generated on a different machine than the MSVC snapshot, it is possible that the snapshot will show as 'Not available (yet)' - in which case, just waiting a bit is the solution here. If source snapshots do not show after an extended period of time, please let me know.2006-05-19 : Everything should be back to normal now. I transfered the snapshot scripts to another machine and it is set to create the snapshots at 03:00 CEST/CEDT (01:00 UT or 02:00 UT depending on Daylight Saving). I also built all the intermediate snapshots.
2006-05-18 : After almost 3 weeks, The snapshots site is *FINALLY* back up. Unfortunatelly, the machine that was actually producing the snapshots died on me (it was an old laptop and it simply refuses to power on again). So it'll be a few more days before the production of MSVC snapshots resumes. The linux snapshots (which are more like references to make sure they still build) are back up - but the CVS logs are missing because the CVS log extraction was produced by the same machine that creates the MSVC snapshots. In the meantime, you can still access the old MSVC snapshots (up to 2006/04/26).
2005-12-09 : Starting today, the build procedure uses Visual Studio 2005 (Visual Studio 8). The first snapshot to be built with VS8 is 2005/12/08 (This snapshot was initially built with VS7, but it was rebuilt to test the new procedure). The snapshot file also contains the redistributable for the VS 8 C Runtime library. The runtime DLLs and manifests are stored as a separate folder per Microsoft Redistribution requirements.
2005-11-27 : BZIP2 is finally included in the snapshots ! The first snapshot to include BZIP2 support is the 2005/11/23 one.
2005-10-07 : On Saturday September 24th 2005 at 16:17:21 GMT (10:17:21 am EDT), Jay commited the mingw_port branch to cvs HEAD... Therefore, all the MSVC related stuff is now part of the mainline development. I was a little late on that, and consequently, until today, was still using the mingw_port branch in the CVS.. The snapshots are now built using CVS HEAD. As a side effect, I have removed all obsoleted snapshots. I have also updated this page to remove references to the now dead/merged mingw_port branch.
2005-08-09 : On 2005/08/08 I updated my build machine to an AMD64 based system and re-installed the base linux system on it to be fully 64 bit. As a consequence, the Linux trial build was slightly changed to attempt being compatible with ia32 systems. This affects Linux builds starting on 2005/08/09.
This work is the collective effort of the hercules development team. There has been so much work put on this that I can hardly remember who did what ! But Roger Bowler and Fish (David B. Trout) did most of the work.
In order to part from cygwin to run and/or build hercules under Windows(r) , the hercules development team as endeavoured to make a complete port for that environment.
This effort has been ongoing pretty much in the background for the last 4 or 5 month. At this time, we feel it is important that the hercules community as a whole be able to get a taste of what's coming. Furthermore, in order to achieve some form of stability, it is also important to us that a lot of people test this new flavo(u)r on their own environment.
There is much less to do now in order to get prepared to run Hercules. There are (or should) be no specifics for the environment, except for a Win32 environment.
The snapshots are built every day at 02:00 GMT for a CVS version of that same day at 00:00 GMT.
The snapshots are built using the command line mode executables of Visual Studio 2005.
Simply head for the snapshots area and select the version you want. If your browser or environment has difficulties viewing this page (ok.. I *DID* have fun doing this..), simply go to the file listing section.
Uncompress (using your favorite unzip utility) the ZIP file in a directory of your choice.
Adjust your Windows(r) path to contain the executable directory - and you are running. You may use the exact same hercules configuration and data files that you used before. Just have a "hercules.cnf" file in the current directory (or specify -f <your config file>).
Use the usual channel : hercules-390@yahoogroups.com or http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hercules-390/. Just make sure this hasn't been addressed before !
Grab a CVS version. Read the associated README files (most obviously, you need to read README.MSVC). It contains a wealth of information - notably how & where to get the free-to-use version of the Microsoft C++ Compiler.
Fish has also setup a very informative instruction page that describes from top to bottom the process of building hercules from source.
This site will hopefully contain additional information in the near future.. Stay tuned !