[Testing] Buildbot Questions

[Grig Gheorghiu]

I realized I didn't answer one of your implementation questions. The
answer is also related to your design question #3.

--- Grig Gheorghiu <grig at gheorghiu.net> wrote:

> --- Michael Stone <michael at laptop.org> wrote:
> 
> > Implementation Question 2: Given the Design Questions which follow,
> > what
> > are some decent ways to proceed in implementing my link-checker and
> > permissions-checker bots?
> > 
> >   In particular, should I concentrate on writing specific
> >   BuildSteps/RemoteCommands that describe the appropriate
> operations
> > or
> >   should I work on writing a single 'ChrootTest' buildstep that my
> >   test-bots can implement, each in their own way?
> > 

Since you're mentioning the need for wildly different types of tests
that you want to run on various buildslaves, I think what would make
sense in your case is to dynamically create the list of steps in your
buildmaster configuration file, then send them to the appropriate
slave. It's a more difficult solution than having a unified list of
steps that you send to each slave, but it gives you much more
flexibility. There have been some suggestions on how to achieve this on
the buildbot-devel mailing list. There are ways to insert build steps
dynamically, based perhaps on information sent back to the master by
the slave. 

For this to work, each slave needs a way to figure out which build
steps it wants to run. For example, you could have a 'make buildstep'
command that each slave would run, and that would generate a list of
build commands needed to run on that particular slave. The slave can
send this list back to the master, and the master would insert each
command as a BuildStep associated with the slave. 

I may have muddied the waters instead of clearing them up at this point
-- please let me know if this is the case...

Grig