Subject: Re: tinderbox
From: Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Date: Tue Aug 21 2001 - 16:29:22 CDT
At 09:43 PM 8/21/01 +0100, Tomas Frydrych wrote:
>what has happened to the Tinderbox?
It looks like the Tinderbox server is still up and running. However, most
of the Tinderbox clients we used to see ran on machines on an old build farm
at SourceGear. IIRC, there were occasional attempts to keep other build
machines up and running (Tom Briggs, Thomas Fletcher, etc.), too.
The net effect at this point is that there are *zero* Tinderbox clients up
and running any more. Sam TH, who used to try to remotely administer those
build farm boxes, hasn't been seen since classes were over.
In short, it's embarrassing, and at the moment I don't have a good solution.
I *think* what we need, going forward, are:
One build master (or whatever you want your title to be)
----------------
This would be someone with the necessary time, interest, knowledge [1], and
access to administer the Tinderbox server, which used to work, but has gone
without love for too long. At minimum, the job would include:
- helping people get any necessary Tinderbox client scripts up and
running on their own boxes, and
- diagnosing and fixing any Tinderbox outages.
Once that's all working smoothly, I have *lots* of time-consuming ideas of
ways to grow the job into something more (daily builds, better release
mechanics, etc.). But first things first. ;-)
A virtual build farm
--------------------
We need a healthy variety of boxes with reliable internet connections that
could stay on, sucking power, constantly rerunning the Tinderbox client
script to pull fresh copies of the sources down, and then automatically
mailing build results back to the server.
This could be an all-volunteer effort, with each box being local to whoever
administers it. (Tinderbox is nice that way.)
Get the "real" build farm hosted
--------------------------------
Or, if we'd like to get really ambitious, it'd be nice to gather up various
machines from the old AbiSource build farm and get them hosted somewhere
other than SourceGear. Since I live in the Bay Area, places like Mozilla
and SourceForge seem a lot more practical than my spare bedroom. ;-)
If we wanted to go down that path, and we find someone willing to physically
host us, then I'd be more than happy to arrange to get the boxes there
physically. However, we *would* need ways for someone (presumably the build
master) to remotely administer that motley set of boxes. I'd be happy to
drive over in person every once in a while to kick the boxes in person, but
you *really* don't want me doing much sysadmin work. Hardware doesn't like
me.
Paul
[1] If knowledge is the main obstacle, Håkan's been working behind the
scenes to put me in touch with Tinderbox gurus at Mozilla. However, on the
"keep Paul away from hardware you care about" principle, we'd be better off
having them talk to our "real" build master.
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