Home | News | How the Library is Built – Part 2

Here’s the second part of a mini-series on how the OpenSceneryX library is built, covering the whole process from the initial contribution of an object all the way through to the moment it appears on the end user’s machine.

This post will cover the process of building and testing the library while it is still under development.

Stage 7: Build

As contributions are added over a period of (usually) a month or two, development versions of the library are regularly built so that it can be tested and problems fixed. The build script that compiles each library release does a lot more than just copying files into a folder structure, I’ll blog about the details of this another time, but several options are available for publishing an object to multiple paths.  The build script simultaneously creates all the documentation for the library and also the developer pack, both of which will eventually be uploaded to the website.

Stage 8: Test

After a batch of objects have been added, the built library is copied into a local X-Plane Custom Scenery folder.  Then I’ll add the new objects to a test scenery package using OverlayEditor, kick off X-Plane and see what they look like.

Stage 9: Revise

If any objects look odd then they are loaded up into Blender and modified and we return to stage 7 again.

Stages 7 to 9 are repeated many times as contributions come in, until there are enough to justify a new release.

Stage 10: Release

Finally, once a decent number of objects have been added, a decision is made to release the new version into the wild.  The release process involves doing a series of things, the details of which will be in the final episode…