Auto-tools/Projects/MozmillBuildbot

This page documents the work from https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=516984 : Run Mozmill Tests with buildbot

This is an Auto-tools project and a Q2 goal

This page is currently a work in progress

Accomplished Work

• reworked patch from bug 516984 so that it would cleanly apply: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=434790 (March 24, 2010)

• added patch to disable notification: http://k0s.org/mozilla/hg/buildbotcustom/.hg/patches/rev/8ba008fdce67 ; i'm not sure if this is complete or not, but staging instances of buildbot should not email tinderbox or other live recipients

• added patch to allow copying buildbot configuration: http://k0s.org/mozilla/hg/buildbot-configs/rev/aa3ff093fa4b ; useful for making new buildmasters as it clones versus symlinks to a versioned master

• added patch to raise a more verbose exception to diagnose download error: http://k0s.org/mozilla/hg/buildbotcustom/.hg/patches/rev/71b8c045d03a

Outstanding Issues

None at the moment ;)

How Buildbot Works

notes from integrating the MozmillFactory [STUB]

Tips

• buildbotcustom is not a python package. On the VM, it is installed in /tools/buildbotcustom/buildbotcustom which is added on cltbld login to PYTHONPATH. On a local machine, I use a [1] to isolate python development. I download buildbotcustom to $VIRTUAL_ENV/buildbotcustom/buildbotcustom and then add $VIRTUAL_ENV/buildbotcustom to the PYTHONPATH in the $VIRTUAL_ENV/bin/activate file so that the code is available within the virtualenv.

• forcing builds through the web does not work. This is due to the fact that the build and the crashsymbols are downloaded must be downloaded from the tinderbox builds so the location of the desired build is unknown as they are indexed by time stamps (seconds since epoch). buildbot sendchange should instead be used to trigger a build for testing purposes.

Outstanding Work

• Add corrections to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Buildbot and linked pages. First this page should be finished (presumedly near project completion) and then the both pages audited to figure out what needs to be done.

Long-term Recommendations

These recommendations are hereby recorded for future use. Their need should be assessed before filed as bugs and made actionable. These are not blockers for this body of work and will not be worked on as part of it.

• Use templates for buildbot-configs: the configurations in http://hg.mozilla.org/build/buildbot-configs are hard-coded for the setup for VMs. Instead, they could be made templates for easy deployment. Cleanup should also be done so that the configurations are more universal and adding new configurations is easy.

• Make buildbotcustom a python package: reason: there's no reason not to (except legacy reasons, continue reading) and having the python be installable saves the trouble with messing with the PYTHONPATH. There is a considerable downside in practical terms, however; http://hg.mozilla.org/build/buildbotcustom is a top level repository; all files therein would have to be moved to http://hg.mozilla.org/build/buildbotcustom/buildbotcustom with the top level directory containing a setup.py file. While the effort is minimal, it may cause issues for existing installations which, while easily resolvable, might involve some work.

• Allow force build through the web: several factories, including the MozmillFactory, use a buildstep like:

       def get_fileURL(build):
           fileURL = build.source.changes[-1].files[0]
           build.setProperty('fileURL', fileURL, 'DownloadFile')
           return fileURL
       self.addStep(DownloadFile(
        url_fn=get_fileURL,
        filename_property='build_filename',
        haltOnFailure=True,
        name="download_build",
       ))

However, for the case of TTW force builds, build.source.changes is an empty tuple, so the step fails with an exception. In general, if build.source.changes is empty, a URL should be constructed from the platform and other variables appropriate to the build

• Make a paster template for buildbot testing: As a generalization, the production buildbot configs are less appropriate for testing and developing Mozilla's buildbot. A template could be created to make it easier to make testing master and slave instances. Files should include master.cfg, a script for (re)starting both master and slave, and a forcebuild script for the buildslave. The template additionally serves as instructions for future generations.