[Buildroot] [RFC] Continuous integration

[Arnout Vandecappelle]

On 25/10/13 14:46, Jérôme Pouiller wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Unfortunately, I am really not sure to be able to follow Buildroot
> Developpers' Day (even with Google Hangout). However, I would like to
> expose one my ideas about patch integration scalability problem.
>
> IMHO, current autobuilder is great to find corner cases, but for simple
> case, I think we can do better. I suggest to build ALL packages with a
> selection of representative reference configurations (uclibc, glibc,
> static, w/o IPv6, w/o MMU...). To make sense, this autobuilder should
> pool git changes and compile in priority new packages, modified package
> and packages which depends (directly or indirectly) from modified
> packages.


  Hi Jérôme,

  This idea sounds good. Unfortunately, it looks like nobody read your 
mail before the developer days so we didn't discuss this subject...

>
> Ideally, it should be able to give test results for branches before they
> would be merged.

  We'd like to keep the current workflow of committing each patch 
individually - it gives cleaner history than with merges. But that's not 
really relevant, because these test builds could run for each patch 
individually and report success, which indicates that it can be applied 
by Peter.

>
> It should also detect regression and send necessary alert. It would be
> better if it may identify commit and author of a regression.
>
> I begin to wrote an autobuilder that would looks like that. You can sees
> results there : http://sysmic.org/~jezz/autobuilder/ (at beginning, it
> was mainly for my personal needs)
>
> It use a set of reference configurations which normally include all
> packages (at least as much as possible). It compute list of packages and
> their directories, list of targets for each configuration and
> dependencies of of each packages for each configuration. It is able to
> compute reverse dependencies and recursive dependencies.

  Why all packages? If it's about testing new packages, then it should be 
tested with only the new package selected (+ any dependencies). If it's 
about testing infrastructural changes, then it should be done on a clean 
tree (which you mention below that you don't do).

>
> Next, it ask to git modification time for each package directory. It is
> able to detect couple of packages/configuration which build time is
> older than package directory modification time.
>
> It compute list of packages/configuration couple and sort it : never
> built first, modified next, a dependency modified after and finally
> other packages, ordered by last build time. Job queue is available
> there: http://sysmic.org/~jezz/autobuilder/jobqueue.html (/!\ 4Mo).
>
> It build elements of job list until change is detected on git repository
> (in this case, it rebuild job queue).
>
> For performance reasons, I don't run make clean between each package. I
> know it may be problematic for reproducibility. However, script will run
> make clean when it is about to rebuild a package that was not modified
> since last build and output directory had not been cleaned since last
> build (= same package with same output directory).
>
> Finally, it dump result. It is able to detect when a package has
> compiled correctly, or it has failed or if a dependency has failed (and
> in this case, it shows problematic package).
>
> Code is available there:
>     https://github.com/jerome-pouiller/br-continuous


  Do you also have a server on which to run this? Could it send out 
success/failure reports to the list (or maybe first to the author and a 
few key developers, until we're sure it works well)?

  Regards,
  Arnout


-- 
Arnout Vandecappelle                          arnout at mind be
Senior Embedded Software Architect            +32-16-286500
Essensium/Mind                                http://www.mind.be
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