[SAC] Resurrect continuous integration VM (once again)

[christopher.schmidt at nokia.com]

On Sep 20, 2011, at 9:07 AM, ext Mateusz Loskot wrote:

> On 20/09/11 13:33, Sandro Santilli wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 11:44:44AM +0100, Mateusz Loskot wrote:
>>> I discussed this shortly with Howard and Chris in Denver and we
>>> agreed to replace old-good Buildbot with http://jenkins-ci.org
>> 
>> Ouch, for a moment I belived you changed your mind about moving to
>> Java.
> 
> Let's say, I had been undecided :-)
> 
>> For those (like me) that didn't know: "jenkins-ci" is the new name
>> for "hudson".
> 
> Yes.
> 
>> What are the pros/cons for droppin Buildbot again ?

A pro for Jenkins is "some people who use SAC know it, and use it." I
maintain our Jenkins server at work, which runs with a half dozen slaves
and runs 80+ jobs; I won't presume to be a Jenkins master, and it certainly
has its downsides, but it really does make for a very nice tool with relatively
simple administration, even for someone who is not a Java wizard (like me).

I am willing to help set up and support a Jenkins install for OSGeo,
as a member of SAC.

I can't say the same about Buildbot.

I think overall, Jenkins will be better for most of the use cases I can imagine
for OSGeo continuous building.

-- Chris

> The major one is that it requires maintainer to be familiar with
> low-level Buildbot-Fu. I seem to be the only person here who
> understands the configuration [1] and is able to maintain it
> [1] http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/buildbot/
> This is a disadvantage.
> The Jenkins is more user and maintainer friendly, is easier to
> configure, connect new slaves, etc.
> 
> When I was testing hudson, I didn't like several things, that's why I
> couldn't make final decision. Here we go on Hudson (versus my Buildbot
> experience):
> - documentation was really bad, based on Wiki mess
> - (So,) I could not find any "best practice" setup to figure out how to
> configure it best for OSGeo
> - (So,) I had impression it's very to make setup mess (easy access &
> trivial operations leading to countless slaves and jobs leading to
> multi-dimensional configuration extreme)
> 
> Buildbot has fantastic documentation, indeed.
> 
> Long story short, both Buildbot and Jenkins are very powerful and
> customisable machines. But, from maintainer point of view - trying to
> find analogy in world of data processing - the former is like manually
> maintaining large and complex GDAL VRT files, the latter is like click &
> drag in GUI of Safe FME software.
> 
>> What does it take to donate build slaves ?
> 
> Are you asking about this?
> 
> https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Distributed+builds
> 
>> Btw, taking a look at the packages list available on my systems
>> (from debian lenny to ubuntu 10.04) to check availability status of
>> jenkings/hudson/buildbot packages, I've stumbled upon
>> http://bitten.edgewall.org/ which naturally integrates into trac.
>> Does anyone have experience with it ? ("buildbot" and "bitten" were
>> the only available packages, for the record).
> 
> Trac is a really great idea, but very badly implemented.
> I'd like keep my own hands off the Trac.
> 
> Best regards,
> -- 
> Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net
> Charter Member of OSGeo, http://osgeo.org
> Member of ACCU, http://accu.org
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