[Buildbot-devel] Google Summer of Code (w.r.t WebStatus)

[Marcus Lindblom]

Dustin J. Mitchell skrev 2011-03-10 06:06:
> Marc-Antoine and I have submitted an application for Buildbot to the
> Google Summer of Code.  The application is due on March 11, and we
> will hear back from Google on March 18.

Cool! :)

> If we are accepted, we will start to see students querying the list
> regarding projects they are interested in working on.
>
> I know that many folks on this list have projects that they'd like to
> see implemented in Buildbot -- I've certainly said "sounds great, let
> me know when you have a patch" more times than I can remember!  This
> may be a perfect time to drive that project, or a part of it, to
> completion by mentoring a GSoC intern.
>
> If you're interested in this, please add a brief outline of your project to
>    http://trac.buildbot.net/wiki/FutureIdeas
> and be prepared to field questions about it here and, if you're an IRC
> person, in #buildbot.  Also, let me know that you're interested so I
> can keep a rough list.

I, for one, would really like to see someone take a stab at the 
JavaScript frontend part and rid the system of the html-status. I don't 
have enough spare brain power at the moment (and I'm going to be a 
father any day now. ;-)

Fixing the webstatus for the future makes it possible to address the 
tickets for the webstatus properly... currently I don't feel like 
spending time on enhancements on a codebase that will go out the window 
soon anyway... (there are requests for iframes, showing branches in 
changes column, sorts & categorization of cells in grid-view and 
waterfall, etc etc. All good suggestions, but we're kinda stalled at the 
moment)

So, I'm sure I can offer at least some GsoC advice and mentoring, and 
hopefully I'll also learn a bit about rich client-side web-UI's in the 
process.

Some random musing on the WebStatus's future in general:

I tried using Pyjamas (compiles python to javascript, like GWT but not 
for Java). Wwhile it works fairly well, I feel that Buildbot is probably 
better served by using standard interfaces (JSON over HTTP) & 
js-frameworks (jQuery etc). That makes it easier for everyone to contribute.

Also, an interim solution might be to build a twisted webstatus that 
uses the JSON-api to fetch (and cache) build data for populate the Jinja 
templates (and waterfall). This web-status "html server" could then be 
run separately from the buildmaster process, thus easing the load on the 
master (and avoiding blocking). One could even spawn several to do 
load-balancing across several servers.

Cheers,
/Marcus