[SURVEY] builders, how do you build? what do you build?

[Michael Stone]

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 05:23:44PM -0400, Erik Garrison wrote:

> 0) Who are you and who do you directly work for?

Michael Stone, and Kim Quirk, respectively.

> 1) What do you build?

Typically, rainbow, olpc-utils, puritan, and full OS builds.
Occasionally, other things like sugar, X, xulrunner, initscripts, the
kernel, and ejabberd.

> 2) Where does it come from? / Who directly provides you with source code?

We can calculate commit statistics for git repositories with logic like:

  git log | git shortlog -s -n

While there are some obvious limitations on what can be inferred from
these statistics, they are perhaps helpful for pinpointing the truly
guilty parties. Rather than me filling in all the details, I suggest you
calculate your own results based on the public repositories on
dev.laptop.org. (If you do, please remember to be careful about checking
for duplicates.)

As release manager, I am "provided" with source code from pretty much
everyone.

Socially, I review a lot of software for people like Martin and Scott
and I review build changes for anyone who wants to make them. I think I
spend most of my integration time talking with Scott, Eben, Marco, Joe,
and Greg.

> 3) Where does the output of your build process go?  / Who handles the
> immediate output of your builds?

For packages: into a local directory, then into a webroot on
dev.laptop.org, then into the OLPC package dropboxes or Fedora CVS, then
into development builds, into release builds, and into manufacturing.

For builds: usually into a local directory, onto a USB key, then onto an
XO for personal consumption.

> 4) Where specifically is it built? (I want server names and/or
> descriptions, where security is a concern please share them with me
> privately.)

teach, pilgrim, xs-dev, and koji.fedoraproject.org.

> 5) What build systems do you use to build software?  Please briefly
> describe their operation or provide a link to documentation or source
> code which does.

I've already written extensively about the software that I use on our
wiki. Check out

  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Build_system and
  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developer/Fedora

Also, the Python and GNUmake manuals.

Michael