[Python-Dev] Automated Python testing (was Re: status of development documentation)

Tim Peters tim.peters at gmail.com
Sun Dec 25 18:54:32 CET 2005


Take a look at:

    http://buildbot.zope.org/

That runs code from:

    http://buildbot.sourceforge.net/

Someone sets up a "buildbot master" (that's what the Zope URL points
at), and then any number of people can volunteer to set up their boxes
as "buildbot slaves".  From time to time the buildbot master asks the
slaves to do the checkout/build/test dance (or any other code dance
you like), the slaves report results back to the master, and the
master displays the slaves' results.

If you look at the 2nd-leftmost column, you can see that the master
knows when checkins have been done.  Checkins can trigger asking the
slaves to run tests, and if the tests fail on some slave the master
can send email saying so, including the list of checkins ("the
blamelist") done since the last time that slave ran tests:

    The guilty developer can be identified and harassed without human
intervention.

:-)

This really helps at Zope Corp.  One downside is that we seem unable
to get an in-house Windows buildbot slave to work reliably, and so far
don't even know whether that's because of Windows, the buildbot code,
or flakiness in our internal network.  It seems quite reliable on
Linux, though.


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