Autobuild serivce shutdown October 1st

[Blzut3]

I was looking today and it seems that no one has informed me that the auto builds got stuck since March outside of Eternity Engine, so I don't really expect this will affect anyone. Although it wasn't public knowledge the EE devs have been previously informed that this announcement was coming although I had no specific timing in mind at the time. Given the lack of complaints for months effective immediately auto builds will be for EE on Windows only, and those builds will conclude after September.

Off hand I can't recall if I launched with the automated macOS builds in January 2010, but in practice most people started relying on them when I took over for the manual Windows builds around June 2013. The builds started on a Late 2009 Mac Mini with a Windows VM as it made sense to only use one machine and of course the practical way to build for macOS is with a macOS device. The hardware thus got refreshed in 2018 after the Late 2009 model stopped being able to run the latest Xcode, and today we're once again at the point where a hardware refresh is needed. It is thus no coincidence that this announcement is following Apple's announcement today of a new Mac Mini and Mac Studio.

However, for once this isn't an "AI RAMageddon is ruining everything" announcement. Given I need to make that hardware refresh anyway to continue developing for macOS there's no financial component to this decision, but rather since 2013 CI services went from something that you pretty much had to roll yourself, to in 2018 being absurdly expensive (especially if you want macOS time), to today where Microsoft gives unlimited free CI time to open source software for all three major platforms. To that end when faced with the question of what does the next generation of the dev builds look like, the reality is that at this time there's no compelling reason for me to be in the loop. Especially since my service was limited to nightly building so as to not tie up my Mac during hours I'd potentially be using it.

Should the deal get altered, the possibility of bringing things back remains on the table. Until then projects should migrate to public CI solutions.

One may wonder what this means for the DRD Team dev builds site itself, and I'm not the person to make that announcement. I do think that GitHub's facilities for serving artifacts has some user experience short comings such that a site archiving a rolling window of builds would still have utility. If this is something the projects are interested in, they all know who to reach out to for finding a path forward.

[Rachael]

Blzut3 - thank you.

Thank you for all you have done all this time. Your service was exceptional and necessary over that period.

I think you made the right decision, given the circumstances, and although it is almost certain Microsoft will "change the deal" as you said, for now things remain as they are and this makes sense in the moment.

Thank you again, for doing this.

[Enjay]

Thank you for all the work that you have put into setting up and maintaining the autobuilds system. Your efforts have been hugely appreciated.
Your decision is both sensible and respected.
Once again, thank you.