buildbot setup (was: Bash scripts in black and white)

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:11:11 +0200 Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote: 

RF> I'm adding Ted to Cc since he expressed interest in setting up a
RF> buildbot for Emacs the last time this subject came up.

>> I'm adding this to my TODO list and will have one up soon-ish.  I don't
>> think I can do the VCS integration that Stefan suggested without some
>> help, though.  I don't know what he meant by "update a branch" when a
>> build is successful.

SM> After "bzr update; compile&test", if the "test" (which might just be to
SM> check that it compiles successfully) succeeds, do "bzr push <someplace>"
SM> where the <someplace> could be sftp://bzr.sv.gnu.org/srv/bzr/emacs/tested

SM> So we could tell people to use <someplace> to checkout the latest
SM> successfully tested version of the code.

I'm not crazy about using a branch to announce a build success.  Are
developers then supposed to track two branches?  Or are users going to
track the tested branch but developers the trunk?  What happens if
there's a tracking failure, do I need to manually fix it ASAP?  How do
we test multiple platforms and coordinate a push when they are all
successful?  Or do we keep a separate "tested" branch for each platform
and library combination, which makes it even more fun and amplifies each
of the issues listed so far?

I think it's better and less confusing to simply announce failures
through another channel, perhaps as bugs.  Then silence will be the
default, which is good for everyone, and builds will not have any
effect on the repository.

Ted