C-Based Buildslaves

Table of Contents

1. C-Based Buildslaves
2. Purpose
3. Requirements
4. Comparison
   1. Fork
   2. Select
   3. Thread

This page describes details on a C-based buildslave using C and C++.

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Purpose

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Requirements

These are absolute requirements that must be in the final version, irrespective of the model chosen.

• Multi-platform, eg Windows, Unix.

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Comparison

Comparison between different models.

Note: This only covers the differences between models, not C/C++.

Fork

Good

• A crash will only take down an individual build.
• Less complex to work with (stateless)
• Blocking interface keeps things realtime.

Bad

• Might require (slight) changes to how commands/builds are run.
• When the master dies the slave needs to idle out could consume resources.
• Potential to use more memory, however the daemon would be extremely small.

Select

Good

• Single process
• Low memory footprint

Bad

• Must keep an internal state and track all protocol traffic for each respective build.
• Crashing will take down all builds, unless multiple slaves are launched which defeats the purpose of using select.

Thread

Good

• Fast
• Highly efficient usage of memory.

Bad

• Complex to write multi-platform
• Crashing will take down all builds, unless multiple slaves are launched which defeats the purpose of using threads.