README.md
Native Windows GitLab CI builds
Unlike Linux, Windows cannot reuse the freedesktop ci-templates as they exist as we do not have Podman, Skopeo, or even Docker-in-Docker builds available under Windows.
We still reuse the same model: build a base container with the core operating system and infrequently-changed build dependencies, then execute Mesa builds only inside that base container. This is open-coded in PowerShell scripts.
Base container build
The base container build job executes the mesa_container.ps1 script which
reproduces the ci-templates behaviour. It looks for the registry image in
the user's namespace, and exits if found. If not found, it tries to copy
the same image tag from the upstream Mesa repository. If that is not found,
the image is rebuilt inside the user's namespace.
The rebuild executes docker build which calls mesa_deps.ps1 inside the
container to fetch and install all build dependencies. This includes Visual
Studio Community Edition (downloaded from Microsoft, under the license which
allows use by open-source projects), other build tools from Chocolatey, and
finally Meson and Python dependencies from PyPI.
This job is executed inside a Windows shell environment directly inside the host, without Docker.
Mesa build
The Mesa build runs inside the base container, executing mesa_build.ps1.
This simply compiles Mesa using Meson and Ninja, executing the build and
unit tests. Currently, no build artifacts are captured.
Using build scripts locally
*.ps1 scripts for building dockers are using PowerShell 7 to run