[Buildbot-devel] Custom Visualization: Extend the WebStatus UI or make something externally?

[Mike Seplowitz]

Hi everyone,

I am in the process of setting up a buildbot that will manage multiple
projects. Each of these projects has a source update stage followed by
builds on multiple architectures. I would like to create a page in the Web
UI that has consolidated project statuses. If all of the subtasks of a
project are successful, I really only want to show a minimal summary for
that project. If there is a failure, then I want to break out the project
into each of its component builders to show which ones have failed.

In the recent discussion on this list about Changeset display order in
waterfall versus
T-Grid<http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=20100723173118.GA19378%40google.com>,
two approaches were mentioned:

*1. Build something external to the buildbot (master) Web UI, querying the
master for information using APIs.
*
>From Dustin's post:

There are lots of projects nipping around the edge of this problem - most
> use some web service API or another to extract data from the buildmaster and
> redisplay it in a different form.  I'd prefer to see things develop in this
> direction, instead - eventually, I'd like to see the built-in WebStatus
> present a basic, no-frills (and optional) view of buildbot's activities,
> with one or more official web frontends, perhaps written in Django or
> something like that, able to interface to the master remotely.
>

This seems like a stable approach, especially if the data query APIs are
more stable than the WebStatus UI implementation. It does mean that I'll
have to do a little more work to get the web page served in a place other
than the buildbot web server, and I'll lose some of the coherency of having
all the web-based views in one place.

*2. Use local templates in the buildbot (master) config area to override /
extend the core Web UI.*

>From Dustin and Stefan's conversation:

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 3:49 PM, Stefan Seefeld <seefeld at sympatico.ca>
> wrote:
>
>> At least, I believe this kind of customization was the entire idea
>> behind the switch to jinja2 templates.
>>
>
> This is a great point - these overridden templates can be put in the
> buildmaster's local directory, so that upgrades to the buildmaster
> source will not overwrite them.
>
> Dustin
>

What I can't tell is whether this is something that can be done at the
moment, or whether Dustin was referring to the use of local
modules/templates in the future.

I'm looking for advice on which approach would be best for my grouped status
page. (I'm not sure that the visualization would be generic enough to push
upstream to the project itself, but I guess that would be a third option.)
I'd imagine that having everyone add their own tweaks and add-ons into their
core buildbot installations is not a sustainable way to do things, so I'd
like to know which path has the most promise.

Thanks,
Mike
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