[Buildbot-devel] New User & odd/different source requirements

[Gwyn Evans]

Hi,
    I'm currently doing some development for another group of the
company that I work for and am being hit with changes being made to
the source that impact the area I'm working in, so I thought I'd see
about installing something to monitor it.  My primary background's
Java and I've used tools of this sort there, but the current work's
C++, so I had a look and BuildBot looked suitable, although I'm
finding the 1st step a bit higher than I anticipated!

    At the moment, I'm simply trying to set up a 1-system build, with
the intention of simply using raw console commands and having the
build run periodically, but I'm still trying to work out (or find
examples of!) things such as the Factories & adding steps.

    One 'feature' here is the ClearCase source control, which provides
a virtual file-system that represents your 'view' onto the repositry,
automatically updated as changes elsewhere happen.  As I'm no
ClearCase expert, all I was intending to start with was to use the
command line steps to set my view 'cleartool setview <viewname>'' then
issue the (localised) make command to run from the view, but even
that's looking challenging.

    Anyway, specific questions...

 1) Should I go with the 0.5.0 kit, or pull the CVS HEAD code?
 2) If the 0.5.0, can I use Steps in some form or do I need to code a
BuildFactory extension to have that functionality?
 3) If I don't want my source tree modified, could I just set
c['sources'] to [] and use a command line step to 'cd /xxx' to the
right folder, or should it just set it to the absolute value & check
clobber's false?
    (Aside - I'm not convinced a default of clobber="true" is a good idea!)
 4) How do I automate a daily run?
 5) Anyone got a config file to do some or most of the above! :-)  

(I'll persevere with this, as part of the problem has been that I've
been looking in the CVS docs & the mailing list but have been
confusing myself with the changes since 0.5.0.  By the way, when the
next release is made, I'd urge that the released .xhtml files are
added to the website, just for ease of access to casual browsers.)

 Gwyn