Re: [gnome-love] Tinderbox (automatic daily build) for GNOME

[Sergio Villar Senin <svillar igalia com>]

Luis Villa wrote:
> Up in the wiki:
> http://live.gnome.org/MicroTinder/RequirementsDoc
>
> Feel free to edit/annotate. For discussion on the list:

Nice document. I'd like to make a few comments about the document and
the tinderbox/jhbuild mixed approach we made.
> Hard Requirements For a New Tinderbox Tool/Setup
>
>     * Supports Big List O'Modules
>     * Many build types/sources: 
>     * Reporting: 
IMHO these requirements fit well with a jhbuild running inside a
tinderbox loop. And, talking about reporting, it's nice to have both
full reports and summaries of the builds (you can see an example here
http://tinderbox.fisterra.org/all_trees.express.html)

>     * Tests:
Adding tests, both unit tests (with check for example) and functional
ones (LDTP/Dogtail), to a tinderbox build loop it's as easy as adding
new phases to a build loop. Furthermore, there's no need to modify the
jhbuild for adding another phases in the build loop, for example, a
phase for linting the code.

I think it's nice to have a separation between the continuous
integration tool (tinderbox) that manages the builds and the tool that
performs the build (jhbuild). What do you think?

>     * Documented: How the tool was made to work with GNOME must be
> written down so that others can maintain it and use it. We've had too
> many tools like this that were made to run once by a mad genius who
> then left the project, or lost interest, and so when it broke we just
> had to discontinue the service.

IMHO tinderbox lacks documentation. We found not a lot of docs about it,
too much code surfing for configuring :). BTW it could be a good
opportunity for documenting it.

> Bonus
>
> These bits aren't necessary, but it is really, really nice if they work.
>
>     * Dependencies:
I agree it's a very nice feature of jhbuild. That's why we used it

>     * Notification: 
Tinderbox just executes commands, so if a command can do it, tinderbox
also can.

>     * Minimal Duplication of Build Information: Does not add Yet
> Another location that must be updated when modules are added/removed-
> i.e., must draw build information in some reasonably low-cost way from
> the canonical jhbuild moduleset. If this requirement isn't met, better
> have someone damn dedicated to keeping it up to date.
>     * Distributed:
It seems a tinderbox-made requirement. I think a good sample is any of
the Mozilla tinderboxes (for example the Firefox build
http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/showbuilds.cgi?tree=Firefox)

>     * Easy to set up/maintain: 
It's not difficult if you know where are the things you have to change
;). As I said in my previous mail, I think it could be a good idea to
distribute debian/tarball/any_other_kind_of_package with a preconfigured
setup for clients. Anyway I think this point is very connected with the
documentation one.

>     * Builds Ekiga:
Neither can I :).

>     * Active Development Community:
I fully agree with you.

Regards.