[Python-Dev] thinking about 2.7 / buildbots / testing

[David Lyon]

On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:13:55 -0000, exarkun at twistedmatrix.com wrote:
> Quite a few years of experience with a distributed team of build slave 
> managers has shown me that by far the most reliable way to keep slaves 
> online is to have them managed by a dedicated team.  This team doesn't 
> need to be small, but since finding dedicated people can sometimes be 
> challenging, I think small teams are the most likely outcome (possibly 
> resulting in a team of one).  

> ..

> Casual volunteers generally just won't keep up with these tasks.

True.

> I suggest finding someone who's seriously interested in the quality of 
> CPython and giving them the responsibility of keeping things operating 
> properly.  This includes paying attention to the status of slaves, 
> cajoling hardware operators into bringing hosts back online and fixing 
> network issues, and finding replacements of the appropriate type 
> (hardware/software platform) when a slave host is permanently lost.

Well, I'm a system administrator now, and a casual developer.

Yes, you need somebody who watches machine control panels and can
type emails on python lists at the same time.

> I would also personally recommend that this person first (well, after 
> tracking down all the slave operators and convincing them to bring their 
> slaves back online) acquire shell access to all of the slave machines so 
> that the owners of the slave hosts themselves no longer need to be the 
> gating factor for most issues.

Depends on where the machines are. There are good tools do check all
automatically. Nagios is one.

Anyway, this would suite my work schedule for the next 12 months.

Do we already have the machines? or do they need to be acquired?

David