[users at bb.net] buildbot 0.9.0 rc3

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Sep 20, 2016, at 4:56 AM, Pierre Tardy wrote:

> Le mar. 20 sept. 2016 à 06:23, Ryan Schmidt a écrit :
> 
>> That's an interesting idea but probably doesn't fit our current and planned Buildbot usage.
> 
> Can you share a link to your current bot, so that I can better understand your usage? 

Sure: https://build.macports.org

We use Buildbot in probably the expected traditional way to verify that the MacPorts base source code builds after every commit. But we also use it to build and distribute binaries of the over 20,000 software packages available in MacPorts, for 8 different versions of the Mac operating system. We recently recreated our Buildbot setup on new hardware with new config files and are still in the process of adding more tasks.

I primarily use the waterfall to keep an eye on things. The console view which I used to use on the old setup has become less useful on the new setup, because we now use triggers; a single commit can trigger multiple builds, and only one of them shows up on the console. I do intend to integrate our build status with the commit browser on GitHub. But we (will) have multiple repositories on GitHub being monitored by Buildbot, so there's not a single commit browser I can keep open to see the status of all Buildbot builds.

And I often find myself needing to force a build of a particular package, after a problem in another package or in the infrastructure has been fixed, so I need to stay on a Buildbot interface to be able to do that.


>> Since it sounds like nine.buildbot.net is not representative of what Buildbot 0.9 actually looks like, are there any public production Buildbot 0.9 installations that I can look at?
> 
> Most of the installs I know of are actually private (or using buildbot_travis) 
>  
> 
> 
>> > The migration guide is hosted within the documentation and is pointed to at the first paragraph of the release note:
>> > http://buildbot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual/installation/nine-upgrade.html#upgrading-to-nine
>> >
>> > I would suggest to try to do the migration for your master.cfg and see how it feels for you own setup.
>> 
>> I currently don't have time to do that. Are there at least any screenshots showing off typical versions of the various Buildbot 0.9 screens? Even better would be a set of before-and-after screenshots showing how the various Buildbot 0.8 screens look now in 0.9.
> 
> Unfortunately, there is no such thing of a typical installation of buildbot nine. Being a CI framework, people are really using it in very different manner.

Sure. But I know what Buildbot 0.8 looks like. I can look at someone else's Buildbot 0.8 installation (e.g. https://build.webkit.org ) and understand it. So if you show screenshots of some Buildbot 0.8 installation (its waterfall, console, build details, etc.), and then show how that same Buildbot installation looks after being upgraded to 0.9, that may help existing users begin to understand 0.9. Since 0.9 is so different, it seems like you should have such a before-and-after document featured prominently on your web site, along with an explanation of why 0.9 is better.


> There is this "typical" post-commit, mono-project usage that 0.8 console view dashboard is very good at.
> 
> I have to admit that indeed the 0.9 console view is not as good as the 0.8.
> nine console view was developed by a gsoc student, and did not get many contribution since that. Despite the student was very talented, it has not been driven and improved by people actually using it day to day.
> 
> I dont know if this is because buildbot nine users are not using it, and/or buildbot eight users are happy enough with eight and dont see the ROI of upgrading (like it seems to be your case).
> 
> I would be very happy to accept any contribution that would improve the state console_view, please remember that Buildbot project is entirely driven by voluntary people, and our roadmap is dependent on what people are happy to work on.

I understand this very well; as a manager and sysadmin of MacPorts, I tell people this about our project all the time. But MacPorts keeps me busy, and I'm not a Python developer, so beyond the occasional patch or feedback I can't contribute to Buildbot right now.