[Buildbot-devel] Easy question

[Dustin J. Mitchell]

2012/1/31 Benoît Allard <benoit at aeteurope.nl>:
> Keeping an eye on backward compatibility, could you elaborate on the
> above ? We might have a winner there !

We don't want to break existing custom steps or configs.  We can't use
any Python magic, because this is about the simplest kind of magic,
and it's causing confusion.  So either configs will need to change (we
could go back to the old f.addStep(classname, (arguments,..)) format),
or class implementations will need to change (so every custom class
becomes two classes - a step factory and a step).

I think the best way forward up with a new, well-documented way to
write buildsteps that *does* involve two classes, and just let the old
way of doing so (with factory and step in the same class) die out of
its own accord.

I'm not convinced that's any less confusing for newcomers to Buildbot,
but I think we'd need to see a proof of concept to find out.

If either of you (or someone else, of course!) would like to come up
with such a proof of concept, and share it with the list, I think that
would be great.  I think that we can win with a bit of competition
between ideas.

Dustin