[Buildbot-devel] Starting slaves on demand?

[john gale]

On Nov 12, 2008, at 3:56 PM, Bruce Stephens wrote:

>> I'd like to setup some slaves that can be started on need from the
>> master. The context is that I want to use the http://pipol.inrialpes.fr/
>> machines to run tests, but they have to be first reserved for a while
>> when you want to use them and then rebooted on the operating system  
>> you
>> want to use.
>
> Another (perhaps more common) situation is where you have a bunch of
> virtual machines which you can start (but don't want to be running
> permanently).  (I guess for the VM situation you'd want to have some
> configurable idle-times so VMs aren't bouncing just because there's
> nothing for them to do for 30 seconds.)
>
> [...]
>
>> Did someone have an easier solution for such a situation?
>
> I've got no idea how to implement it, but I agree it would be a very
> nice feature to have.



Similarly, I'd love to see a feature of being able to sleep the build  
slaves after they're done, and wake them up before starting the next  
job.  This could be abstracted to allowing a slave to "exist" in the  
master control program even if it doesn't respond to a ping...  then a  
pre-buildStep could be a wakeup command.

Maybe in the next few months I'll have time to help out with this.

	~ john

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updated October 12, 2005