aki

[brainstorm]:

I keep running into the same questions, project after project, company after company. How do I see who broke the build? How do I know if this bug has been fixed in this codeline? How do I see the difference between these two builds? And how can we make this all happen faster? Smoother? Easier? And you revisit the same questions as new tangles and complexities of scale are added to the equation.

I joined Netscape in 2001, partially to play with a bunch of weird unices, partially to see How Build Engineering is Done Properly. I had already tackled LXR/ViewCVS + Bonsai + Tinderbox elsewhere, and that toolchain has loomed large at every place I've been, at least in concept. Source browsing + repository querying + continuous integration, no matter which specific products you use.

Here I am, back at Mozilla after a number of years away, and I'm amused (and pleased) to see that the current state of things is surprisingly analogous to how I designed our build system elsewhere. We had the db with history and archived configurations; buildbot has the daemon with real-time log views; but otherwise things are fairly close. Both systems are in similar stages of development, ready to take that next step.

Here are some thoughts about the direction that next step could go. Please keep in mind that I'm trying to ignore how much work this will all be to implement for the moment, so I can write down my ideas without cringing.

• Is hgweb a strong bonsai replacement?
• Tinderbox: waterfall vs dashboard
• Buildbot: strengths and weaknesses
• Pull, not push
• Still a ways out