[OSGeo-Board] Server Requirements for the OSGEO Reference Stack

[Frank Warmerdam]

...

>> On 3/9/06, Frank Warmerdam <warmerdam at pobox.com> wrote:
>> ...
>>> I, personally, would be keener on getting a build-and-smoke-test 
>>> server going before the reference stack server.

Markus says:
>> do you think of a sort of compile farm with various OS to test and to 
>> generate binary releases? That would be cool and probably even 
>> important as a service to both developers and users (one stop shop for
> binaries).
>> For some distros it is still a pain to get all the "ingredients"...

Markus,

A "compile farm" would be nice, but a bit more exotic than I had in
mind.  I was just thinking of one server in a rack at some ISP that we
would setup with automated builds for foundation projects, and then to
run automated tests.  So that when something gets committed to CVS
that break things an automated mail would get sent out within a few
hours of the problem.

The test environment should have as many optional components (like
PostGIS, Oracle, etc) so that optional components can be tested.

The test enviroment should be available to all projects that are interested.
I *think* the GeoTools guys already have something like this setup.  And I'm
not sure it would really apply for projects like Mapbender and MapBuilder.
Autodesk likely already does this for MapGuide, but on principle I would like
to see us include it if there is someone interested in setting it up.

Gary Lang wrote:
 > OK.
 >
 > I know we've talked about this but must have missed the decision. What's
 > the estimated cost of this?

No decision was made.  In fact, I haven't yet really made any effort to
write up any sort of proposal.  But my rough thinking is the server would
cost roughly $1K/year.  It would also take a non-trivial amount of effort
to admin, but I am hopeful we can get volunteers from the various projects
to do with that.  If we keep it reasonably static is shouldn't take to
much effort once setup.

I would add that this particular system would have to be considered somewhat
"disposable".  We would need to give "ssh" access out to quite a few different
folks on different projects to help set it up, and login for testing,
debugging problems and so forth.  So we don't want it inside anyone's
firewall, or holding sensitive data.

If we want a compile farm of different systems, I think we would have to
host that in some friendly environment (university, coporate sponsor etc)
since a low cost ISP that provides boxen is not going to want us putting
in a bunch of weird stuff.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org