Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
Write down some developer documentation
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
I think it's better suited here than in the wiki.
  • Loading branch information
sfan5 committed Jan 14, 2024
1 parent 1ba26d6 commit dd094d7
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Showing 3 changed files with 91 additions and 2 deletions.
4 changes: 2 additions & 2 deletions README.md
Expand Up @@ -25,11 +25,11 @@ Table of Contents

Further documentation
----------------------
- Website: https://minetest.net/
- Website: https://www.minetest.net/
- Wiki: https://wiki.minetest.net/
- Developer wiki: https://dev.minetest.net/
- Forum: https://forum.minetest.net/
- GitHub: https://github.com/minetest/minetest/
- [Developer documentation](doc/developing/)
- [doc/](doc/) directory of source distribution

Default controls
Expand Down
24 changes: 24 additions & 0 deletions doc/developing/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
# Developer documentation

## Wiki

Some important development docs are found in the wiki: https://dev.minetest.net/

Notable pages:

- [Releasing Minetest](https://dev.minetest.net/Releasing_Minetest)
- [Engine translations](https://dev.minetest.net/Translation#Maintaining_engine_translations)
- [Changelog](https://dev.minetest.net/Changelog)
- [Organisation](https://dev.minetest.net/Organisation)
- [Code style guidelines](https://dev.minetest.net/Code_style_guidelines)

## In this folder

- [Developing minetestserver with Docker](docker.md)
- [Miscellaneous](misc.md)

## IRC

Oftentimes knowledge hasn't been written down (yet) and your best bet is to ask someone experienced and/or the core developers.

Feel free to join the [#minetest-dev IRC](https://wiki.minetest.net/IRC) and ask questions related to **engine development**.
65 changes: 65 additions & 0 deletions doc/developing/misc.md
@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
# Miscellaneous

## Sign the Android APK from CI

The [Github Actions Workflow](https://github.com/minetest/minetest/actions?query=workflow%3Aandroid+event%3Apush)
automatically produces an APK for each architecture.
Before installing them onto a device they however need to be signed.

This requires an installation of the Android SDK and `adb`.
```bash
.../android-sdk/build-tools/30.0.3/apksigner sign --ks ~/.android/debug.keystore \
app-arm64-v8a-release-unsigned.apk
# Enter 'android' (without quotes) when asked for a password
```

Note that the `debug.keystore` will not exist if you have never compiled an
Android app on your system (probably).

After that installing it will work:
```bash
adb install -r -d ./app-arm64-v8a-release-unsigned.apk
```

## How to get debug output from Minetest on Android

In case debug.txt isn't enough (e.g. when debugging a crash), you can get debug
output using logcat:

`adb logcat -s 'Minetest:*' '*:F'`

Note that you can do this even *after* the app has crashed,
since Android keeps an internal buffer.

A segmentation fault for example looks like this:

```
01-10 17:20:22.215 19308 20560 F libc : Fatal signal 6 (SIGABRT), code -1 (SI_QUEUE) in tid 20560 (MinetestNativeT), pid 19308 (netest.minetest)
01-10 17:20:22.287 20576 20576 F DEBUG : *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
01-10 17:20:22.287 20576 20576 F DEBUG : Build fingerprint: '...'
01-10 17:20:22.287 20576 20576 F DEBUG : Revision: '4'
01-10 17:20:22.287 20576 20576 F DEBUG : ABI: 'arm64'
01-10 17:20:22.288 20576 20576 F DEBUG : Timestamp: 2024-01-10 17:20:22+0100
01-10 17:20:22.288 20576 20576 F DEBUG : pid: 19308, tid: 20560, name: MinetestNativeT >>> net.minetest.minetest <<<
01-10 17:20:22.288 20576 20576 F DEBUG : uid: 10385
01-10 17:20:22.288 20576 20576 F DEBUG : signal 6 (SIGABRT), code -1 (SI_QUEUE), fault addr --------
[ ... more information follows ... ]
```

## Profiling Minetest on Linux

We will be using a tool called "perf", which you can get by installing `perf` or `linux-perf` or `linux-tools-common`.

For best results build Minetest and Irrlicht with debug symbols
(`-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo` or `-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug`).

Run the client (or server) like this and do whatever you wanted to test:
```bash
perf record -z --call-graph dwarf -- ./bin/minetest
```

This will leave a file called "perf.data".

You can open this file with perf built-in tools but much more interesting
is the visualization using a GUI tool: **[Hotspot](https://github.com/KDAB/hotspot)**.
It will give you flamegraphs, per-thread, per-function views and much more.

0 comments on commit dd094d7

Please sign in to comment.