[Buildbot-devel] buildbot-0.6.3 released

[Brian Warner]

I've just finished releasing 0.6.3, and it should be available on the
download page by now. The release is signed, as usual, with my GPG key
0x1514A7BD, and the MD5 checksum is as follows:

 1370d7fd402e42e3cbb1608486f87291  buildbot-0.6.3.tar.gz

and the SHA1 checksum, just for completeness, is:

 2a09f767d9605fff003fe9e0fd7d627496adc3c6  buildbot-0.6.3.tar.gz

0.6.3 is a minor feature release, fixing some nagging bugs and adding
compatibility with the recently released Twisted-2.0.0 . The web page is now
configurable with CSS, and has a favicon. The 'buildbot' client tool can now
provide a small debug panel and a real-time status display application.

Full release notes are attached to this message.

I'm working on the metabuildbot, I think it should be ready for public
consumption by the end of the week. Bear has been working hard on the win32
buildslave, trying to make it behave better, so once that's working then we
may have a chance of nailing down the last problems with windows
compatibility.

As always, please report problems, questions, and bugs to this buildbot-devel
list so everyone can share. Thanks!

Have a crayons-hidden-in-your-briefcase day,
 -Brian


* Release 0.6.3 (25 Apr 2005)

** 'buildbot' tool gets more uses

The 'buildbot' executable has acquired three new subcommands. 'buildbot
debugclient' brings up the small remote-control panel that connects to a
buildmaster (via the slave port and the c['debugPassword']). This tool,
formerly in contrib/debugclient.py, lets you reload the config file, force
builds, and simulate inbound commit messages. It requires gtk2, glade, and
the python bindings for both to be installed.

'buildbot statusgui' brings up a live status client, formerly available by
running buildbot/clients/gtkPanes.py as a program. This connects to the PB
status port that you create with:

  c['status'].append(client.PBListener(portnum))

and shows two boxes per Builder, one for the last build, one for current
activity. These boxes are updated in realtime. The effect is primitive, but
is intended as an example of what's possible with the PB status interface.

'buildbot statuslog' provides a text-based running log of buildmaster events.

Note: command names are subject to change. These should get much more useful
over time.

** web page has a favicon

When constructing the html.Waterfall instance, you can provide the filename
of an image that will be provided when the "favicon.ico" resource is
requested. Many web browsers display this as an icon next to the URL or
bookmark. A goofy little default icon is included.

** web page has CSS

Thanks to Thomas Vander Stichele, the Waterfall page is now themable through
CSS. The default CSS is located in buildbot/status/classic.css, and creates a
page that is mostly identical to the old, non-CSS based table.

You can specify a different CSS file to use by passing it as the css=
argument to html.Waterfall(). See the docstring for Waterfall for some more
details.

** builder "categories"

Thomas has added code which places each Builder in an optional "category".
The various status targets (Waterfall, IRC, MailNotifier) can accept a list
of categories, and they will ignore any activity in builders outside this
list. This makes it easy to create some Builders which are "experimental" or
otherwise not yet ready for the world to see, or indicate that certain
builders should not harass developers when their tests fail, perhaps because
the build slaves for them are not yet fully functional.

** Deprecated features

*** defining Builders with tuples is deprecated

For a long time, the preferred way to define builders in the config file has
been with a dictionary. The less-flexible old style of a 4-item tuple (name,
slavename, builddir, factory) is now officially deprecated (i.e., it will
emit a warning if you use it), and will be removed in the next release.
Dictionaries are more flexible: additional keys like periodicBuildTime are
simply unavailable to tuple-defined builders.

Note: it is a good idea to watch the logfile (usually in twistd.log) when you
first start the buildmaster, or whenever you reload the config file. Any
warnings or errors in the config file will be found there.

*** c['webPortnum'], c['webPathname'], c['irc'] are deprecated

All status reporters should be defined in the c['status'] array, using
buildbot.status.html.Waterfall or buildbot.status.words.IRC . These have been
deprecated for a while, but this is fair warning that these keys will be
removed in the next release.

*** c['manholePort'] is deprecated

Again, this has been deprecated for a while, in favor of:

 c['manhole'] = master.Manhole(port, username, password)

The preferred syntax will eventually let us use other, better kinds of debug
shells, such as the experimental curses-based ones in the Twisted sandbox
(which would offer command-line editing and history).

** bug fixes

The waterfall page has been improved a bit. A circular-reference bug in the
web page's TextLog class was fixed, which caused a major memory leak in a
long-running buildmaster with large logfiles that are viewed frequently.
Modifying the config file in a way which only changed a builder's base
directory now works correctly. The 'buildbot' command tries to create
slightly more useful master/slave directories, adding a Makefile entry to
re-create the .tap file, and removing global-read permissions from the files
that may contain buildslave passwords.

** twisted-2.0.0 compatibility

Both buildmaster and buildslave should run properly under Twisted-2.0 . There
are still some warnings about deprecated functions, some of which could be
fixed, but there are others that would require removing compatibility with
Twisted-1.3, and I don't expect to do that until 2.0 has been out and stable
for at least several months. The unit tests should pass under 2.0, whereas
the previous buildbot release had tests which could hang when run against the
new "trial" framework in 2.0.

The Twisted-specific steps (including Trial) have been updated to match 2.0
functionality.

** win32 compatibility

Thankt to Nick Trout, more compatibility fixes have been incorporated,
improving the chances that the unit tests will pass on windows systems. There
are still some problems, and a step-by-step "running buildslaves on windows"
document would be greatly appreciated.

** API docs

Thanks to Thomas Vander Stichele, most of the docstrings have been converted
to epydoc format. There is a utility in docs/gen-reference to turn these into
a tree of cross-referenced HTML pages. Eventually these docs will be
auto-generated and somehow published on the buildbot web page.