Using VM's to test on multiple platforms?

[JonathanC]

This issue came up peripherally at work today - do Java developers use virtualization to test on multiple platforms?

I'll be the first to admit that even I don't do this myself, but the benefits are enormous. Being able to test your game or your Swing application on all the major platforms (XP, Vista, Ubuntu) AND to test them on all the major Java versions (Java 5, Java 6u7, Java 6u10) would be a boon for rooting out distribution problems, don't you think?

All somebody needs to do is take a clean VM and generate snapshots to cover all these cases.

If that's the case, why aren't we seeing more of this done?

[princec]

We probably are seeing it, just none of us cheapass amateurs in here have the cash for the sort of rig you'd need
Besides, I solve all my problems by
a) embedding the VM for windows
b) testing on a Mac I have lying around and hoping for the best
c) ignoring linux

Cas

[Mr_Light]

This issue came up peripherally at work today - do Java developers use virtualization to test on multiple platforms?

Yes, though with ('bigger') games the gain is minimal: think graphics driver.

That being said ppl rave about how testing is a totally different discipline - and that is fine with me as I find it to be tedious work.

Games published by our own members! Go get 'em!

[Mr_Light]

the virtualised graphics driver doesn't / has poor support for things like opengl.

For a simple test, I don't know just asking on this forum works well enough for that given you don't have box of your own.

[gouessej]

c) ignoring linux

It is absolutely unfair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I encourage other developers not to do the same. If it is the rule for LWJGL, it is good to know it.  Would it be better to encourage people who want to support Linux to use JOGL rather than LWJGL?

[Addictman]

I think he said ignore linux due to the recent data he precented, where it turned out hardly any users on linux played puppygames games.

Or am I wrong? (If you have been ignoring linux all along, well then the numbers explain themselves  )

[princec]

We've supported Linux from the very beginning but as Linux represents less than 1% of sales it's hardly surprising we don't try any harder. LWJGL works perfectly on Linux - much better than JOGL - and always has done.

<edit> Just checked = 0.5% of sales to Linux. It's as if they're not interested in games, or paying for stuff

Cas

[gouessej]

We've supported Linux from the very beginning but as Linux represents less than 1% of sales it's hardly surprising we don't try any harder. LWJGL works perfectly on Linux - much better than JOGL - and always has done.

<edit> Just checked = 0.5% of sales to Linux. It's as if they're not interested in games, or paying for stuff

Cas

It is absolutely wrong, LWJGL doesn't work better than JOGL under Linux and that was already true 3 years ago, I totally disagree, it is completely nonsensical. If Kenneth Russell read this, I'm not sure he would agree with you. You're only trying to make some provocations without any proof. I've used JOGL for years and the only bug that bothered me wasn't Linux specific.

[purpleguitar]

I don't know if this is worth anything or not, but I buy games from developers because of their support of Linux. However, I don't always buy the Linux version, since the rest of my games are sitting on my Windows partition. There's a twisted logic here that keeps me productive in Linux and unproductive in Windows, even as I wish I could never have to reboot. I'll admit it's not 100% rational.

[princec]

It is absolutely wrong, LWJGL doesn't work better than JOGL under Linux and that was already true 3 years ago, I totally disagree, it is completely nonsensical. If Kenneth Russell read this, I'm not sure he would agree with you. You're only trying to make some provocations without any proof. I've used JOGL for years and the only bug that bothered me wasn't Linux specific.

No, it is not wrong, and there was proof aplenty until relatively recently - JOGL couldn't do proper fullscreen on Linux (limited as it was by AWTs inability to do proper fullscreen).

Cas

Games published by our own members! Go get 'em!

[gouessej]

No, it is not wrong, and there was proof aplenty until relatively recently - JOGL couldn't do proper fullscreen on Linux (limited as it was by AWTs inability to do proper fullscreen).

Cas

Lol  I prefer software windowed full-screen mode rather than a pretty crash under LWJGL. Secondly, at least under KDE, when a window is undecorated and occupies the whole screen, the window manager considers it as "full-screen", please refer to the answer a engineer of Sun Microsystems gave when a metacity bug in GNOME had forced the task bar to be drawn over the window of the Java application only when this window had been set as unresizable. JOGL doesn't do any full-screen on Linux, it is up to AWT.

Don't forget that the full-screen mode is important when you want to be able to change the display mode but only using this feature without changing the display mode doesn't improve the performance even under Windows. The impact of the full-screen mode is often overestimated.

[Abuse]

Don't forget that the full-screen mode is important when you want to be able to change the display mode but only using this feature without changing the display mode doesn't improve the performance even under Windows. The impact of the full-screen mode is often overestimated.

If JOGL sits ontop of the surface exposed through AWT, you won't be able to perform page flipping if you arn't in fullscreen exclusive mode - so there will be a real performance impact, especially on slower hardware where excess fill rate is not so abundant.
The same goes for vsync - tearing is fugly!

[erikd]

To get back on topic, with virtualization you're still testing on one machine and probably clean installations that don't really represent the average user's machines. Also, many problems seem to come from graphics driver/card incompatibilities (or other hw related incompatibilities) that you can't really test with virtualization.
But besides that, yes virtualization does some great added value for testing many aspects, but IMHO it isn't suitable for many games specific aspects.