[darcs-users] buildbot once again

[Karel Gardas]

Hi Petr,

I know that you do a lot for darcs these days, but honestly speaking
this email looks a little bit rude to me.

First of all, for last month or so I also wondered why there are so many
buildbots failing. Many just off-line and many on-line but failing on
configure. Now I think I see the reason. I have tried to keep my
buildbots (Solaris/OpenBSD) running well for last month or so and during
that time I've been hit two or even three times by message that my bot
fails due to configure error. Yes, I know you move darcs forward so you
need to do some changes (usually updating hashed storage), but it would
be really great if in case of failing bot due to your change you at
least contact buildbot owners to update darcs required packages on their
bots. IMHO this will make situation much more easier also for you and
you would not need to setup completely parallel infrastructure to what's
currently running.

Petr Rockai wrote:
> Obviously, there are is a number of slaves on the existing buildbot for various
> platforms. However, an unmaintained slave will do more harm than no slave. I'd
> like to ask existing owners to reconsider this. If you are willing to keep the
> slave operational, please let me know. Otherwise, the slaves will be
> decommissioned when we switch to the new buildmaster.

It would be really good if you contact buildbot owners on their personal
email addresses. I think that's the purpose on holding contact address
on bots anyway. Also please do not do any such critical decision during
the holiday season. Many people are out from time to time and do not
care about their service to community that much like for example during
the school year.

> As things are, and assuming that most of the slaves go, we will lose support
> for solaris, openbsd and OSX. If you care about any of these platforms, please
> consider either maintaining your slave (if you already have one) or donating a
> new one.

I keep my Solaris/OpenBSD buildbots running well, so I don't see any
reason why they should not serve darcs community in the future. I also
don't see any reason why you consider them to be "lost".

Conclusion: as a buildbot owner I see the only reason why so much bots
are failing, i.e. frequent updates to darcs required packages. Now, I do
have perhaps naive idea, but what about to make darcs buildable with
head versions of required packages (mostly hashed-storage). i.e. bot
will get hashed-storage, build it, test it and then get darcs, build it
against the previously build hashed storage, test etc. I think this will
 keep you a lot of bots running w/o a need for intervention and still
once such support is written you will use it for all the subsequent
hashed-storage versions automatically...

Thanks,
Karel