[Python-Dev] Regular scheduled releases

[David Bolen]

"Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> writes:

> People will never ever test nightly builds. Been there, done that.
> Instead, the nightly build process will break, and nobody will fix
> it for months (or even complain, for that matter).

Certainly seems to be past experience.

I know Martin knows this, but for other readers who may not, my
Windows XP buildbot built nightly windows installers (the basic MSI
package, close but not necessarily a fully signed new release as
Martin makes) starting in September, 2007.  It ran successfully for
about 6 months, at which point it started to fail fairly consistently.
Nobody noticed, and Martin and I finally just shut it down in
December, deciding it wasn't worth the effort to try to fix.

My OSX buildbot has been building nightly DMG images (though again, I
suspect Ronald has a few extra steps beyond what its doing for a full
release) since April.  I'd actually be interested in knowing if anyone
is using them - I suspect perhaps not.

In both cases, getting the process going actually took quite a bit of
effort (even stuff like having to fix the buildbot upload code in the
Windows case), not just on my part, but with the help of Martin and
Ronald.  But without actual use of the result, it's hard to think it
was worth it.  I'm pretty sure my default reaction to a break-down in
the current OSX build process at this point would be to first suggest
disabling it unless there were real users.

-- David