[Buildbot-devel] RFC: more flexible web status display

[John Pye]

Brian Warner wrote:
>> From: John Pye <john.pye at student.unsw.edu.au>
>> On the broader topic, I wonder if there's been any progress on using
>> 'live status clients' to provide blame notification eg via Yahoo IM or
>> MSN etc, or via a dedicated app as in the following (MantisConnect):
>> http://www.futureware.biz/mantisconnect/screenshots.php
>>     
>
> We've got 'buildbot statusgui', which uses Gtk to display a
> two-box-per-Builder realtime status display. It's more of a demo app than
> anything else, really, but it could provide a start towards writing a more
> full-featured status client.
>   
I tried the statusgui but can't connect. There doesn't seem to be a way
to specify a password for connecting, so I get this error:

Unhandled error in Deferred:
Traceback from remote host -- Failure: twisted.cred.error.UnauthorizedLogin:
[buildbot at cruncher2 slave]$

Shouldn't there be a --password option or something? Does it use a slave
username/password or the 'debug' password?

> Twisted provides protocol support to do IM notification on a variety of
> networks, but I haven't gotten around to taking advantage of it yet. I know
> some folks who would like to get AIM notification of build failures, so that
> will probably be the first to get written.
>
> I've no idea how to write code that interfaces with the windows taskbar. Any
> idea what kind of network protocol that could use? The statusgui speaks PB to
> the buildmaster.. would it be easier for someone to write notification
> applets if the buildmaster also spoke some other kind of protocol? XMLRPC?
> CORBA? D-BUS?
>   
I guess that the easiest thing might be the IM notification approach.
But another approach with the taskbar would be  possible. For windows:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/334779

For GNOME, as a 'notification applet' in PyGTK:
http://pygtk.org/articles/applets_arturogf/

Also, using C#:
http://www.codeproject.com/cs/miscctrl/taskbarnotifier.asp

-- 
John Pye
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
The University of New South Wales
Sydney  NSW 2052  Australia
t +61 2 9385 5127
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