build: fix packages aged out of mirrors breaking MSVC build

[randombk]

Checklist

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Purpose of change

MSVC builds are breaking because vcpkg is pinned to a 1y+ old version, and some of the packages
in its package list just aged out of retention on package mirrors.

Updating vcpkg reveals a secondary issue where both nightly and manual release pipelines work but the CI for PRs break. This is because both the first two trigger the build via msbuild while the PR one uses cmake, which seems to cause dependency resolution problems.

Describe the solution

1. Update the pin to the latest release: https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg/releases/tag/2024.12.16

Newer versions of the lukka/run-vcpkg workflow step can read the pin from the vcpkg.json so we can avoid repeating ourselves across many files.

2. Change the msvc-full-features-cmake build (used for PRs) to use msbuild, to mirror the behavior of the actual release pipelines. We also build the Cataclysm-test-vcpkg-static target, which is skipped in the release builds.

Note: We're building in Release mode as the hacking way we're pulling in some SDL and ttf libraries doesn't seem to support Debug builds.

Describe alternatives you've considered

It looks like a specific version is necessary, so we'll need to bump this every year or so.

[scarf005]

can't we keep using cmake? we should make releases use cmake not the other way around in order to unify all toolchains with cmake

[randombk]

Getting cmake to work with vspkg is going to be trickier, and the current release builds don't use cmake.

I think in terms of getting things to build again, we should standardize on msbuild and make a transition to cmake across the board at a later time

[RoyalFox2140]

The way I look at it, we want MSVC now for Windows users. Unifying technology is good when the game builds at all. After trying to make a release on my fork I see this is why it doesn't work.

We want to have builds first before we worry about improving them. Negatively impacting the playerbase is a losing proposition in the long run.

I'll wait for others to review, but I want this merged before tonight's nightly release

[chaosvolt]

I crave

[RobbieNeko]

I am very conflicted as to my opinion about removal of CMake. I could very easily see "later time" turning into "several years later" given the Linux v.s. Windows split of people who know how to build at all, much less how to work with the github releases and builds, and we really should bring all the builds over to CMake... but I also recognize that we'd generally prefer MSVC builds to be available, and migrating the rest of the builds to CMake is out-of-scope.

In summary, stuck between a rock and a hard place

[RobbieNeko]

Also, it's worth noting that the CMake + MSVC build on PRs has been working just fine even while the MSVC releases haven't been working, so I'd wonder if it wouldn't be better to see if we can't instead base releases off of that? Or has that already been considered?

[randombk]

I agree it'd be great if we can rip out msbuild and change the release builds to use CMake. I don't have a Windows dev environment to look into that, but given there's no urgent need to land this PR right now there's time if someone wants to take a crack at it.

Also, it's worth noting that the CMake + MSVC build on PRs has been working just fine even while the MSVC releases haven't been working

I don't know if that's 100% true. I might be misinterpreting the logs, but I think the cases of recent successfully builds have been pulling the packages from the CI workflow cache - i.e. if the cache were to expire and they were to try and pull the packages from upstream mirrors, they would fail.

i.e. https://github.com/cataclysmbnteam/Cataclysm-BN/actions/runs/12699138333/job/35399125011 didn't download anything from upstream mirrors.

[RoyalFox2140]

Well I went to sleep and we lost MSVC last night so I guess now it's not urgent.

[RobbieNeko]

The annoying thing is, having looked at the failed PR build, it's literally one package/library that can't be found by SDL2_mixer: libxmp

[RobbieNeko]

Looking further into it:
libxmp isn't even used for any of the audio formats we care about I'm pretty sure. It's only used for MOD files and some old video game audio formats (like the Atari) If I could just figure out how to grab SDL2-mixer without the .MOD support then we'd probably be smooth sailing. Unfortunately, it looks like vcpkg just finds the required libraries through cmake in one way or another

[RobbieNeko]

I just fixed CMake + MSVC on my own branch! The solution was, funnily enough, just pinning SDL2-mixer to a version before they introduced the libxmp stuff that borked it all up. 2.6.3#1 was what we were using before, and thus it's what I pinned it to.

[RobbieNeko]

Superseded by #5934