[Buildbot-devel] [Monotone-devel] Help request with buildbot for monotone

[Scott Lamb]

Nathaniel Smith wrote:
> Polling is a little annoying, but useful when people can't use
> sendchange... I forget how the buildbot poller works, but the CIA
> poller at contrib/ciabot_monotone.py in monotone's source tree uses a
> nice algorithm that's fully against the automate interface.

Polling (speaking in general here; haven't used the Monotone poller) has
 important advantages:

A1) it's robust. I don't like "try once to tell the buildbot about this,
then give up". You need retry logic. I don't see retry code in any of
the change pushers, and I do see it (inherently) in all the change pollers.

A2) it keeps all of the buildbot configuration in one place. You don't
have to change the version control server's configuration when you set
up a new test buildbot, etc.

A3) it keeps all of the buildbot logging in one place. It's very nice to
have one logfile that will almost always tell you what's wrong.

When done properly, it doesn't have a significant impact on the
performance of the client, server, or network.

It has one disadvantage:

D1) Changes don't show up immediately.

I choose polling.

Best regards,
Scott

-- 
Scott Lamb <slamb at slamb.org>