[mapserver-dev] Rethinking our doc site build workflow (+vote)

[thomas bonfort]

Since my previous email, I've coincidentally been browsing #osgeo logs
and sac mailing list archives and now see that it has become urgent
that we take action on this. Our build setup is inducing an
inacceptable load on the osgeo projects vm and it is clear that some
action has to be taken to offset that load off to another system.

regards,
thomas

On 4 April 2014 22:57, Tom Kralidis <tomkralidis at gmail.com> wrote:
> +1.  Placing the doc/site build workflow somewhere upstream,
> elsewhere, and then scp'd for deployment is the way to go.
>
> ..Tom
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 4:55 PM, thomas bonfort <thomas.bonfort at gmail.com> wrote:
>> PSC,
>>
>> In light of the recent projectsvm downtime and the (increasing, given
>> the new translations) load we are putting on that server while
>> building our docs, I would like to propose that we transition our
>> build process to use travis-ci for the compilation part.
>>
>> In clear, docs would be automatically built on travis-ci.org once a
>> commit is pushed on the stable or master branch, and would then be
>> scp'd/rsync'd to the public projectvm directory on success.
>>
>> Advantages:
>> - no need to maintain build scripts on the projectsvm
>> - the actual travis config files are simple and minimal:
>> https://github.com/tbonfort/docs/commit/1d178ab6e6d0765adfbb0fea40404a6a1803a969
>> (without the logic to publish to mapserver.org yet, though)
>>
>> Inconveniences:
>> - we rely on an external service we have no control on. we can always
>> switch back to the current solution if needed (no www.mapserver.org
>> downtime, the docs would just not be in sync while we transitioned).
>> - building the PDFs has a non-negligeable impact on build times and
>> apt packages needed to be installed on the travis instances. They
>> would therefore be disabled by default, but might be enabled on a
>> case-by-case basis if the commit message contains a magic keyword.
>> - it might seem we are loosing control as to what is published on the
>> mapserver.org website (given the resulting website is automatically
>> published). In practice this is more or less already the case with the
>> automatic builds happening on the projectsvm.
>>
>> I've had confirmation from the travis team that we are not abusing
>> their system by implementing this:
>>
>> ===================================================================
>> Hey Thomas,
>>
>> Thanks for getting in touch and checking with us!
>>
>> We absolutely don't mind you using our service to build and push your
>> documentation site, quite the opposite.
>>
>> We're always happy to see people adopt Travis CI in unexpected and new
>> ways, so by all means, ship it!
>>
>> Cheers, Mathias
>>
>> --
>> Mathias Meyer
>> =====================================================================
>>
>> Before investing more time on this, I will need a go from the PSC. I'm
>> going to be offline next week and unable to respond, but will start
>> the transition at my return if no -1s are casted.
>>
>> +1 Use Travis-ci platform to build and publish mapserver website
>>
>> best regards,
>> thomas
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