[Python-Dev] Still looking for volunteer to run Windows buildbot

[Trent Mick]

[Tim Peters wrote]
> This touches on something we (including Martin) should think about: 
> it's very painful to build a full Python on Windows because of these
> external packages...

Yup. That is part of what I meant by updating PCBuild\readme.txt below:
to improve the instructions so the build-dance for all these external
packages is a little more cut n' paste.

> Something we might be able to do instead is have just one person per
> external project endure the pain of building it, and then have them
> check in the whole post-compilation post-test project directory tree. 
> Everyone else (presumably including Windows buildbot slaves) using the
> same compiler could then just check out the result.

If people don't mind having prebuilt binaries checked in, yes I suppose
we could do this. For some projects here at work we have a "prebuilt"
dir at the root of the source tree:

    prebuilt/
        win32-x86/
            foo/    # Windows prebuilt bits for package foo
        linux-x86/
            foo/
        solaris8-sparc/
            foo/
        ...

<does-"svn up python"/>
Whoa, someone is way ahead of me here. :)


> What's worse is when checkins cause both trunk and branch rebuilds. 
> That can bring my zippy box to its knees, particularly when two of the
> disk-intensive tests (like test_largefile) run at the same time.

That would require some kind of Scheduler work in the build master
config that knows how to queue up scheduled builds from multiple sources
to only allow one per machine at a time. I'd find this very useful for
other projects at work and I'm sure other buildbot users would as well.
Maybe buildbot may already have something like this?


> > Remaining TODOs:
> > - make sure the python24-maint branch one works
> 
> Works for me, although (as the Wiki page says) you also need to copy
> zlib-1.2.3 into the branch build area.

Yup. Looks like my build worked. Another TODO now though:

- Figure out why usage of:
    winsound.PlaySound(<something>, winsound.SND_ALIAS)
  fails on my Win2k box. This is why the test suite fails on that box.


> > - get the build slaves running as a Windows service
> 
> Mark Hammond has a patch to the buildbot project toward this end:
> 
> <http://sf.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1401121&group_id=73177&atid=537003>

Cool. I'll look into that.


Trent

-- 
Trent Mick
TrentM at ActiveState.com