[Buildbot-devel] buildbotURL

[Brian Warner]

> Could I get some clarification about what buildbotURL does please. The
> default master.cfg file has the following description but I think there
> is a mistake. 

I think that description is correct, although it should refer to the
html.Waterfall object rather than a vague "internal web server".
c['buildbotURL'] is meant to tell people how to get to the Waterfall display
(or, to be precise, to get to the buildbot's HTML status page.. at the moment
this is the same as the waterfall display, but eventually we'll have a
front-page that has Waterfall and other kinds of status displays hanging off
of it). You should give it whatever value you would type into a web browser
to get at the Waterfall page.

The Waterfall() object is frequently created with an http_port= argument that
tells it what TCP port to listen on, however in general it *cannot* deduce
what URL might point to itself. "http://%s:%d/" % (os.uname()[1],http_port)
might work, except that the name won't be fully-qualified, and the system
might not be visible to the outside world (but some form of reverse-proxy
might make it visible at a different URL). If you use distrib_port= then it
certainly can't figure out where it might be visible, because the actual web
server is running in an entirely different process.

c['buildbotURL'] is currently only used internally. The intention, however,
is to use it:

 in the MailNotifier, to provide the recipients with a hyperlink to the web
 page describing the build that just failed

 in the IRC bot, to provide the same sort of link

 in the Waterfall page, if necessary, to provide an absolute "top" URL in
 places where is is inconvenient to get there through a series of relative
 URLs


hope that helps,
 -Brian