[Python-Dev] Stable build slaves authority

[David Bolen]

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

> Please be aware that Windows poses its own challenges. Often, builds
> or testsuite runs end up with popup windows, which then hang subsequent
> builds. You often get dozens of them to click away. So operating a
> Windows slave is much more tedious than a Unix one.

For anyone else considering a Windows buildbot, recently I started
using an AutoIt script in the background to automatically clear any
RTL dialogs (which seems to come and go as an issue but got really bad
recently in one of the branches, and I lost track of when Python
itself stopped disabling them during tests), and it's been working
well so far.

I also have a tweak in the local buildbot code to disable all
Windows-based (non-RTL) dialogs during test runs.

I'd be happy to provide both bits to anyone else starting a Windows
buildbot.

There's still a regular problem of stranded python_d processes in the
background (something shared with my OSX tiger slave, but there I can
run a script to detect processes owned by init and kill them).  So
periodic manual checks/cleanup is still definitely needed.

-- David