[Buildbot-devel] Adding comments to builds

[Ben Hearsum]

For the past few days I have been working on adding something to the Waterfall
display to allow comments to be added to a build. It will be very similar to
the build commenting feature on a Tinderbox. A few things need to happen:

* After a comment is added something needs to appear on the Waterfall display
to indicate this.

* The comments need to be added to the build log somehow.

I have tried a couple methods of going about this. Firstly, I attempted to add
a BuildStepStatus (and call addLog) upon instantiation of a new BuildStatus. I
got backtraces here because addLog does not work until the BuildStepStatus has
started. I tried to add the log a few other ways but either got errors or no
change on the Waterfall display.

The second method was creating a 'BuildNotes' in status/builder.py. This
object would add a log as soon as it was created and supported getName,
getLog, getBuild, getText, and getColor. To go along with this I created a
'NotesBox' class in status/html.py, modeled after the StepBox. The intention
was to put a table cell containing a link to the full text of the comments for
a build, for every build. After trying to get it to display with
WaterfallStatusResource I gave up.

At this point I'm not sure where to go. I still think that having it as a
BuildStep is the cleanest solution (a buildstep that has a log, but no actions).


- Ben