Re: [boost] Re: Regression report for Releases?

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-03-20 15:25:14

On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 13:53:48 -0600, Rene Rivera wrote
> Jeff Garland wrote:
>
> > Do we even have a way of tracking the check-ins?  That might be a 
> > good first
> > step.  I notice that sourceforge seems to be generating some sort of email
> > when I check-in, but I don't know of a way to subscribe to the changelist. 
> 
> Yes we do. Dave and I, long ago, set up those emails SF sends so we 
> could get Buildbot to work. So if we track CVS changes to the 
> individual builds we can tell who and what breaks a build. Even 
> though I'm still working on the buildbot here's a sneak peek.. 
> http://build.redshift-software.com:9990/

Very cool!  No doubt buildbot will be a great asset -- when do you think it
will be ready to 'go production'?  

> > others run several.  So depending on when you check-in, it takes up to a
> > couple days to really see the results of all platforms/compilers. 
> > The only way I see us getting closer to the ideal is more machines 
> > really dedicated to just Boost testing...
> 
> Or going to an active system like Buildbot.

I don't think the existence of Buildbot solves all of our resource issues.  I
would expect only a limited number of the current regression testers will be
able to install and use Buildbot -- I'm certain there will be firewall and
other issues for some that just stop this from happening.  Plus if it takes 5
hours to run a Boost build you will still have a long delay before you find
out if something is broken.  For most developers they would like to see a
library focused rebuild, which for most could happen in minutes.  As an
example, since almost nothing in Boost depends on date-time it's very hard for
me to break all of Boost.  So rerunning all of the Boost regression for a
date-time check-in is mostly a waste of resources.  We've also had several
previous discussions on other things that are pushing up the need for
additional resources including: Boost is just plain getting bigger, need for
non-debug regression tests, double testing for dll non-dll versions of linked
libs, etc.

Jeff