Re: Bash scripts in black and white

[Ken Raeburn <raeburn@raeburn.org>]

On May 15, 2010, at 13:12, Romain Francoise wrote:
>> 1. A reliable machine to run the nightly build. Suggestions?
> 
> Reliable and not too critical since anybody who has write access to
> the repository gets to run code on it automatically and the project
> on Savannah has 129 members, some of which may be abandoned accounts
> with weak credentials...

Virtual machines with externally-imposed firewall rules can help with that.  You could even use a non-networked VM solely for building, and handle the network interaction (getting sources, reporting results) on the host.  If full virtualization isn't available, there are also FreeBSD jails, Solaris containers, etc.  A simple chroot isn't enough if you're downloading and running potentially hostile code, and don't want your machine to become a spambot.

>> 2. A script to automate the task and send report to an accessible
>>   place.
> 
> I recommend buildbot.
> 
> I'm adding Ted to Cc since he expressed interest in setting up a
> buildbot for Emacs the last time this subject came up.

I'd been meaning to look into buildbot, though mostly related to stuff I was doing at a job I'm not at any more... if it's easy enough to set up (including firewalling), I might be able to contribute a buildslave virtual machine at some point.

Ken