[Buildbot-devel] Build data retrieval (revision number, committer name) for a specific project/repo, in a custom class

[shiny knight]

Hi,

I am having some trouble to figure out exactly how do you access to these info.

I have made a subclass of ShellCommand; and I would like to check for commits made against a specific project (since my server build multiple projects).

Looking at the docs is not clear how do you retrieve the committer name, revision number and such, specifying in which project or repository is located.

I would like to achieve something like this: query the commit list for a specific project, and get the last commit, so I can retrieve the info about a commit (who did it, when and ID of the commit) directly in this custom class, and use it later.

How can I achieve this? I see some data related to logs, in the build object (messageFormatter example on the manual), but other than that I don't see how do you exactly retrieve info.

The only dirty way that came in mind is to check the Buildbot log for commits and just read them, but I can't believe that there isn't a more clean way to retrieve data from the Buildbot directly.

Also, is there any plan to extend the manual, or make a book, where users can actually get more info about how things works? I tried to get involved in the project, but If I can't even understand how things works in the current Buildbot, is hard to make extra module that may expand its capabilities. There are any sort of books out there; but surprisingly nothing about Buildbot and how to use its API, besides the basic things covered in the manual. 
I am aware that nobody has time, but I would consider it an investment : the more people find easy to help with the project, the less work is going on the shoulder of the stable developers. I've seen a ton of people abandoning Buildbot, in favor of other systems, because it is hard to gather info, unless one is constantly pestering the mailing list.

Thanks!