[Buildbot-devel] Custom build properties - patches, try builds, future?

[Brian Warner]

Roch Gadsdon <rochg at bakbone.co.uk> writes:

> Hello list,
>
> I have a few thoughts / questions on custom build properties.

Hi there.. sorry to be so slow in responding to this.

Yeah, I definitely think there's a need for this sort of thing. I'm tempted
to think that we might want to distinguish between these things you've added
which are inputs to the build process from the existing "build properties"
which could be considered as strictly outputs of the build. Maybe the new
input things should be called "parameters" or "arguments" or something. Or
maybe it's reasonable to use not bother with this input-vs-output distinction
and just call them all "properties" and treat them identically.

I've wanted this personally for a while: I've been slowing working on a
"buildbot force" command that would be like "buildbot try" but without the
patch, because when I'm bringing up a new buildslave and discovering what
libraries are missing, etc, it's convenient to be able to retrigger builds
without making spurious source code changes (or going to the web page's Force
Build button, or using 'buildbot debugclient'). And I'd really like to be
able to say "buildbot try buildbot.test.test_web" to just do a subset of the
tests.

Could you please file a trac ticket on http://buildbot.net and include your
patches (and a reference to or a copy of Paul Gain's patch too, since it
sounds like yours is meant to be used in conjunction with it) ? That would
give us a place to center the discussion about this feature.

thanks!
 -Brian