| | 11 | |
| | 12 | === Scope === |
| | 13 | Work on this project would begin with a simple proof-of-concept page, selection of a !JavaScript framework, and the necessary Python code to support all of it. This will involve a lot of discussion about problems that may come up later in the project, and planning ahead for them. Once this has been reviewed and accepted, you can go page-by-page through the Buildbot interface, rewriting each (or even parts of each) in !JavaScript. |
| | 14 | |
| | 15 | The JS frontend will talk to a REST service provided by the Buildmaster. Much of this service is already implemented, but it will need to be expanded and improved, which will require some Python programming and learning a bit about Twisted Python |
| | 16 | |
| | 17 | Issues to consider: |
| | 18 | * testing - how will we test the JS? |
| | 19 | * compatibility - what browsers will we support? |
| | 20 | * configuration - how can we configure the frontend using parameters in the Buildmaster's configuration file? |
| | 21 | * security - how can we protect information from being seen by those who should not see it? How can we limit who can start or stop builds? |
| | 22 | * licensing - if we redistribute a JS framework, its license must be compatible with Buildbot's |
| | 23 | * documentation - how can we do a better job of documenting the web frontend for others to use? |
| 16 | | After using Darcs for a while, I've become a bit irritated by the fact that my "Changes" column is so wide (since Change objects that are generated by darcs_buildbot.py include a full email address as the 'author' field). I'm starting to think that we could have a UserManager object somewhere (created and registered in the config file) which the ChangeSource can use to translate the author field of the incoming messages into a User object. This User object would have a method to return a suitably short name for the person, for use in the Changes column on the Waterfall display. |
| | 32 | === Scope === |
| | 33 | To do well with this project, you would need to bring a lot of the Windows experience that is lacking in the Buildbot development community. Assuming you're familiar with Windows APIs and accessing them from Python, this bug would entail |
| | 34 | * writing test cases to reproduce bugs users have seen |
| | 35 | * interacting with the Twisted community to design solutions that can be merged upstream |
| | 36 | * implementing portable fixes to those bugs |
| | 37 | * documenting them |
| 18 | | Later, this User object might also make it easier to send messages to the particular person by walking through all the available status plugins to see which of them has seen the user recently (I'm thinking IM and IRC here, in particular). |
| | 39 | == User Objects == |
| | 40 | Buildbot deals with "users" in a number of ways: commits are generated by users, and those cause builds that the users may want to know about. Users can also cause builds via the web, IRC, or from command-line tools. Buildbot communicates results back to people through a number of mechanisms, too: email, IRC, web, and so on. In many cases, Buildbot administrators need to ensure that only certain people can perform certain operations, such as starting or cancelling builds. |
| 26 | | With Darcs in particular (but it also applies to pretty much every VC system), branches are a bit of a hack. The biggest problem I'm seeing right now is when a Builder is configured and presented as being for a specific branch (by virtue of being triggered by a Scheduler which only pays attention to a single branch), then when I use the "force build" button on that Builder, I usually forget to fill in the branch name, and thus get a trunk build by mistake. |
| | 49 | == Multi-Repository Builds and Build Coordination == |
| | 50 | As implemented right now, a single Buildmaster can build multiple projects, but each project must be built from a single source code repository, and builds of the projects must not interact. Increasingly, though, users want to build projects that require source from multiple repositories, and where a checkin to any of those repositories should trigger a build. Similarly, users often want to coordinate multiple projects, for example a web frontend and backend server that are built separately but must be tested together or packaged into a single installer. |
| 32 | | == Multi-Project Builds == |
| | 59 | * Sourcestamps that point to multiple repositories and revisions in those repositories. Builds would then specify a way to check out the given revision of each repository before beginning the compile and test steps. Designing these would involve some significant changes to the database schema, as well as a solid plan for backward compatibility. Because changes would be required on the master and slave, you would need to think about compatibility between different versions of master and slaves, as well. If possible, it would be smart to concentrate on only one version-control system for a summer project, so that others could fill in the blanks later. |
| | 60 | * Source managers that know everything about a particular version control repository. A source manager, for example, could determine the changes that were made between two source stamps (revisions), or provide the information required to check out a particular revision from a repository. Source managers, too, could be implemented for a single version control system, so that others can finish the work for the remaining systems. |
| | 61 | * "Gaggles" of builds. Right now, it is very difficult to wait for a number of different builds to finish - for example, if you need the Windows and Linux builds to finish so that you can compress them into a CD image. The most difficult part is to determine when two builds "go together", even if they occur at different times. If we can group builds into gaggles, then it's easy to wait for, for example, all of the Linux and Windows builds in a particular gaggle to finish before starting the CD-burning build. This project would involve a lot of design discussions with Buildbot users, then some database and code changes to manage gaggle identifiers. Finally, some easy-to-use synchronization steps and documentation of how to use them would make this available to Buildbot's users. |
| 44 | | == Slave-side repository caching == |
| 45 | | |
| 46 | | Slaves often checkout/clone the entire repo (when doing full builds). This can take a lot of time and network traffic, both with CVS:es and DVCS:es. |
| 47 | | |
| 48 | | Having the option for a local clone on the slave side, for each repository used, would reduce network traffic to a minimum and increase checkout/update speed. |
| 49 | | |
| 50 | | * modern DVCS:es use hardlinks, so local clones are speedy and space-efficient. |
| 51 | | * repeated full cloning of DVCS repos can take a lot of time if the history is big. |
| 52 | | * CVCS:es might want to ease the load of the central server similarly. (f.ex. svnsync can be used to update a local "master" repo and the checkouts can then be done locally using file:// protocol) |
| 53 | | * buildbot try combined with DVCS:es might require the transfer of new commits (not just patches). These "temporary commits" are probably unwanted after the try build, and thus a clean clone is often wanted. |
| 54 | | * also, it might be easier to automate merge/rebase tests, just to see if integration is ok (while throwing away the resulting merge commit in the local repo) |
| | 72 | === Scope === |
| | 73 | This project begins with a significant design problem: figure out the common behaviors across a number of version control systems, and how to represent those behaviors to Buildbot's users. Once that's done, you'll need to implement those new behaviors. To allow for different amounts of available time over the summer, it will be smart to start with one version-control system, then tackle more if time allows. |
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