BuildBot Manual 0.6.6

Table of Contents


Next: , Previous: (dir), Up: (dir)

BuildBot

This is the BuildBot manual.

Copyright (C) 2005 Brian Warner

Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved.

--- The Detailed Node Listing ---

Introduction

Installation

Troubleshooting

Concepts

Version Control Systems

Users

Configuration

Getting Source Code Changes

Change Sources

Build Process

Build Steps

Simple ShellCommand Subclasses

Source Checkout

Build Factories

BuildFactory

Process-Specific build factories

Status Delivery


Next: , Previous: Top, Up: Top

1 Introduction

The BuildBot is a system to automate the compile/test cycle required by most software projects to validate code changes. By automatically rebuilding and testing the tree each time something has changed, build problems are pinpointed quickly, before other developers are inconvenienced by the failure. The guilty developer can be identified and harassed without human intervention. By running the builds on a variety of platforms, developers who do not have the facilities to test their changes everywhere before checkin will at least know shortly afterwards whether they have broken the build or not. Warning counts, lint checks, image size, compile time, and other build parameters can be tracked over time, are more visible, and are therefore easier to improve.

The overall goal is to reduce tree breakage and provide a platform to run tests or code-quality checks that are too annoying or pedantic for any human to waste their time with. Developers get immediate (and potentially public) feedback about their changes, encouraging them to be more careful about testing before checkin.

Features:


Next: , Previous: Introduction, Up: Introduction

1.1 History and Philosophy

The Buildbot was inspired by a similar project built for a development team writing a cross-platform embedded system. The various components of the project were supposed to compile and run on several flavors of unix (linux, solaris, BSD), but individual developers had their own preferences and tended to stick to a single platform. From time to time, incompatibilities would sneak in (some unix platforms want to use string.h, some prefer strings.h), and then the tree would compile for some developers but not others. The buildbot was written to automate the human process of walking into the office, updating a tree, compiling (and discovering the breakage), finding the developer at fault, and complaining to them about the problem they had introduced. With multiple platforms it was difficult for developers to do the right thing (compile their potential change on all platforms); the buildbot offered a way to help.

Another problem was when programmers would change the behavior of a library without warning its users, or change internal aspects that other code was (unfortunately) depending upon. Adding unit tests to the codebase helps here: if an application's unit tests pass despite changes in the libraries it uses, you can have more confidence that the library changes haven't broken anything. Many developers complained that the unit tests were inconvenient or took too long to run: having the buildbot run them reduces the developer's workload to a minimum.

In general, having more visibility into the project is always good, and automation makes it easier for to do the right thing. When everyone can see the status of the project, developers are encouraged to keep the tree in good working order.

The current version of the Buildbot is additionally targeted at distributed free-software projects, where resources and platforms are only available when provided by interested volunteers. The buildslaves are designed to require an absolute minimum of configuration, reducing the effort a potential volunteer needs to expend to be able to contribute a new test environment to the project. The goal is for anyone who wishes that a given project would run on their favorite platform should be able to offer that project a buildslave, running on that platform, where they can verify that their portability code works, and keeps working.


Next: , Previous: History and Philosophy, Up: Introduction

1.2 System Architecture

The Buildbot consists of a single buildmaster and one or more buildslaves, connected in a star topology. The buildmaster makes all decisions about what and when to build. It sends commands to be run on the build slaves, which simply execute the commands and return the results. (certain steps involve more local decision making, where the overhead of sending a lot of commands back and forth would be inappropriate, but in general the buildmaster is responsible for everything).

The buildmaster is usually fed Changes by some sort of version control system See Change Sources, which may cause builds to be run. As the builds are performed, various status messages are produced, which are then sent to any registered Status Targets See Status Delivery.

The buildmaster is configured and maintained by the “buildmaster admin”, who is generally the project team member responsible for build process issues. Each buildslave is maintained by a “buildslave admin”, who do not need to be quite as involved. Generally slaves are run by anyone who has an interest in seeing the project work well on their platform.


Previous: System Architecture, Up: Introduction

1.3 Control Flow

A day in the life of the buildbot:


Next: , Previous: Introduction, Up: Top

2 Installation


Next: , Previous: Installation, Up: Installation

2.1 Requirements

At a bare minimum, you'll need the following (for both the buildmaster and a buildslave):

Certain other packages may be useful on the system running the buildmaster:


Next: , Previous: Requirements, Up: Installation

2.2 Installing the code

The Buildbot is installed using the standard python distutils module. After unpacking the tarball, the process is:

     python setup.py build
     python setup.py install

where the install step may need to be done as root. This will put the bulk of the code in somewhere like /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/buildbot . It will also install the buildbot command-line tool in /usr/bin/buildbot.

To test this, shift to a different directory (like /tmp), and run:

     pydoc buildbot

If it shows you a brief description of the package and its contents, the install went ok. If it says no Python documentation found for 'buildbot', then something went wrong.

Windows users will find these files in other places. You will need to make sure that python can find the libraries, and will probably find it convenient to have buildbot on your PATH.

If you wish, you can run the buildbot unit test suite like this:

     PYTHONPATH=. trial -v buildbot.test

This should run up to 109 tests, depending upon what VC tools you have installed. On my desktop machine it takes about two minutes to complete. Nothing should fail, a few might be skipped. If any of the tests fail, you should stop and investigate the cause before continuing the installation process, as it will probably be easier to track down the bug early.

If you want to test the VC checkout process, you'll need to install a tarball of repositories, available from http://buildbot.sf.net/ . Otherwise there are about 8 tests which will be skipped (all with names like testSVN and testArchHTTP). If you unpack this tarball in ~/tmp, it will create ~/tmp/buildbot-test-vc-1, and you can enable the extra tests with:

     PYTHONPATH=. BUILDBOT_TEST_VC=~/tmp trial -v buildbot.test

If you cannot or do not wish to install the buildbot into a site-wide location like /usr or /usr/local, you can also install it into the account's home directory. Do the install command like this:

     python setup.py install --home=~

That will populate ~/lib/python and create ~/bin/buildbot. Make sure this lib directory is on your PYTHONPATH.


Next: , Previous: Installing the code, Up: Installation

2.3 Creating a buildmaster

As you learned earlier (see System Architecture), the buildmaster runs on a central host (usually one that is publically visible, so everybody can check on the status of the project), and controls all aspects of the buildbot system. Let us call this host buildbot.example.org.

You may wish to create a separate user account for the buildmaster, perhaps named buildmaster. This can help keep your personal configuration distinct from that of the buildmaster and is useful if you have to use a mail-based notification system (see Change Sources). However, the Buildbot will work just fine with your regular user account.

You need to choose a directory for the buildmaster, called the basedir. This directory will be owned by the buildmaster, which will use configuration files therein, and create status files as it runs. ~/Buildbot is a likely value. If you run multiple buildmasters in the same account, or if you run both masters and slaves, you may want a more distinctive name like ~/Buildbot/master/gnomovision or ~/Buildmasters/fooproject.

Once you've picked a directory, use the buildbot master command to create the directory and populate it with startup files:

     buildbot master basedir

You will need to create a configuration file (see Configuration) before starting the buildmaster. Most of the rest of this manual is dedicated to explaining how to do this. A sample configuration file is placed in the working directory, named master.cfg.sample, which can be copied to master.cfg and edited to suit your purposes.

Internal details:

This command creates a file named buildbot.tac that contains all the state necessary to create the buildmaster. Twisted has a tool called twistd which can use this .tac file to create and launch a buildmaster instance. twistd takes care of logging and daemonization (running the program in the background). /usr/bin/buildbot is a front end which runs twistd for you.

In addition to buildbot.tac, a small Makefile.sample is installed. This can be used as the basis for customize daemon startup, See Launching the daemons.


Next: , Previous: Creating a buildmaster, Up: Installation

2.4 Creating a buildslave

Typically, you will be adding a buildslave to an existing buildmaster, to provide additional architecture coverage. The buildbot administrator will give you several pieces of information necessary to connect to the buildmaster. You should also be somewhat familiar with the project being tested, so you can troubleshoot build problems locally.

The buildbot exists to make sure that the project's stated “how to build it” process actually works. To this end, the buildslave should run in an environment just like that of your regular developers. Typically the project build process is documented somewhere (README, INSTALL, etc), in a document that should mention all library dependencies and contain a basic set of build instructions. This document will be useful as you configure the host and account in which the buildslave runs.

Here's a good checklist for setting up a buildslave:

  1. Set up the account

    It is recommended (although not mandatory) to set up a separate user account for the buildslave. This account is frequently named buildbot or buildslave. This serves to isolate your personal working environment from that of the slave's, and helps to minimize the security threat posed by letting possibly-unknown contributors run arbitrary code on your system. The account should have a minimum of fancy init scripts.

  2. Install the buildbot code

    Follow the instructions given earlier (see Installing the code). If you use a separate buildslave account, and you didn't install the buildbot code to a shared location, then you will need to install it with --home=~ for each account that needs it.

  3. Set up the host

    Make sure the host can actually reach the buildmaster. Usually the buildmaster is running a status webserver on the same machine, so simply point your web browser at it and see if you can get there. Install whatever additional packages or libraries the project's INSTALL document advises. (or not: if your buildslave is supposed to make sure that building without optional libraries still works, then don't install those libraries).

    Again, these libraries don't necessarily have to be installed to a site-wide shared location, but they must be available to your build process. Accomplishing this is usually very specific to the build process, so installing them to /usr or /usr/local is usually the best approach.

  4. Test the build process

    Follow the instructions in the INSTALL document, in the buildslave's account. Perform a full CVS (or whatever) checkout, configure, make, run tests, etc. Confirm that the build works without manual fussing. If it doesn't work when you do it by hand, it will be unlikely to work when the buildbot attempts to do it in an automated fashion.

  5. Choose a base directory

    This should be somewhere in the buildslave's account, typically named after the project which is being tested. The buildslave will not touch any file outside of this directory. Something like ~/Buildbot or ~/Buildslaves/fooproject is appropriate.

  6. Get the buildmaster host/port, botname, and password

    When the buildbot admin configures the buildmaster to accept and use your buildslave, they will provide you with the following pieces of information:

  7. Create the buildslave

    Now run the 'buildbot' command as follows:

              buildbot slave BASEDIR MASTERHOST:PORT SLAVENAME PASSWORD
         

    This will create the base directory and a collection of files inside, including the buildbot.tac file that contains all the information you passed to the buildbot command.

  8. Fill in the hostinfo files

    When it first connects, the buildslave will send a few files up to the buildmaster which describe the host that it is running on. These files are presented on the web status display so that developers have more information to reproduce any test failures that are witnessed by the buildbot. There are sample files in the info subdirectory of the buildbot's base directory. You should edit these to correctly describe you and your host.

    BASEDIR/info/admin should contain your name and email address. This is the “buildslave admin address”, and will be visible from the build status page (so you may wish to munge it a bit if address-harvesting spambots are a concern).

    BASEDIR/info/host should be filled with a brief description of the host: OS, version, memory size, CPU speed, versions of relevant libraries installed, and finally the version of the buildbot code which is running the buildslave.

    If you run many buildslaves, you may want to create ~buildslave/info and share it among all the buildslaves with symlinks.


Next: , Previous: Creating a buildslave, Up: Installation

2.5 Launching the daemons

Both the buildmaster and the buildslave run as daemon programs. To launch them, pass the working directory to the buildbot command:

     buildbot start BASEDIR

This command will start the daemon and then return, so normally it will not produce any output. To verify that the programs are indeed running, look for a pair of files named twistd.log and twistd.pid that should be created in the working directory. twistd.pid contains the process ID of the newly-spawned daemon.

When the buildslave connects to the buildmaster, new directories will start appearing in its base directory. The buildmaster tells the slave to create a directory for each Builder which will be using that slave. All build operations are performed within these directories: CVS checkouts, compiles, and tests.

Once you get everything running, you will want to arrange for the buildbot daemons to be started at boot time. One way is to use cron, by putting them in a @reboot crontab entry:

     @reboot buildbot BASEDIR

There is also experimental support for sysvinit-style /etc/init.d/buildbot startup scripts. debian/buildbot.init and debian/buildbot.default may be useful to look at.

It is important to remember that the environment provided to cron jobs and init scripts can be quite different that your normal runtime. There may be fewer environment variables specified, and the PATH may be shorter than usual. It is a good idea to test out this method of launching the buildslave by using a cron job with a time in the near future, with the same command, and then check twistd.log to make sure the slave actually started correctly. Common problems here are for /usr/local or ~/bin to not be on your PATH, or for PYTHONPATH to not be set correctly. Sometimes HOME is messed up too.

To modify the way the daemons are started (perhaps you want to set some environment variables first, or perform some cleanup each time), you can create a file named Makefile.buildbot in the base directory. When the buildbot front-end tool is told to start the daemon, and it sees this file (and /usr/bin/make exists), it will do make -f Makefile.buildbot start instead of its usual action (which involves running twistd). When the buildmaster or buildslave is installed, a Makefile.sample is created which implements the same behavior as the the buildbot tool uses, so if you want to customize the process, just copy Makefile.sample to Makefile.buildbot and edit it as necessary.


Next: , Previous: Launching the daemons, Up: Installation

2.6 Logfiles

While a buildbot daemon runs, it emits text to a logfile, named twistd.log. A command like tail -f twistd.log is useful to watch the command output as it runs.

The buildmaster will announce any errors with its configuration file in the logfile, so it is a good idea to look at the log at startup time to check for any problems. Most buildmaster activities will cause lines to be added to the log.


Next: , Previous: Logfiles, Up: Installation

2.7 Shutdown

To stop a buildmaster or buildslave manually, use:

     buildbot stop BASEDIR

This simply looks for the twistd.pid file and kills whatever process is identified within.

At system shutdown, all processes are sent a SIGKILL. The buildmaster and buildslave will respond to this by shutting down normally.

The buildmaster will respond to a SIGHUP by re-reading its config file. The following shortcut is available:

     buildbot sighup BASEDIR


Next: , Previous: Shutdown, Up: Installation

2.8 Maintenance

It is a good idea to check the buildmaster's status page every once in a while, to see if your buildslave is still online. Eventually the buildbot will probably be enhanced to send you email (via the info/admin email address) when the slave has been offline for more than a few hours.

If you find you can no longer provide a buildslave to the project, please let the project admins know, so they can put out a call for a replacement.

The Buildbot records status and logs output continually, each time a build is performed. The status tends to be small, but the build logs can become quite large. Each build and log are recorded in a separate file, arranged hierarchically under the buildmaster's base directory. To prevent these files from growing without bound, you should periodically delete old build logs. A simple cron job to delete anything older than, say, two weeks should do the job. The only trick is to leave the buildbot.tac and other support files alone, for which find's -mindepth argument helps skip everything in the top directory. You can use something like the following:

     @weekly cd BASEDIR && find . -mindepth 2 -type f -mtime +14 -exec rm {} \;
     @weekly cd BASEDIR && find twistd.log* -mtime +14 -exec rm {} \;


Previous: Maintenance, Up: Installation

2.9 Troubleshooting

Here are a few hints on diagnosing common problems.


Next: , Previous: Troubleshooting, Up: Troubleshooting

2.9.1 Starting the buildslave

Cron jobs are typically run with a minimal shell (/bin/sh, not /bin/bash), and tilde expansion is not always performed in such commands. You may want to use explicit paths, because the PATH is usually quite short and doesn't include anything set by your shell's startup scripts (.profile, .bashrc, etc). If you've installed buildbot (or other python libraries) to an unusual location, you may need to add a PYTHONPATH specification (note that python will do tilde-expansion on PYTHONPATH elements by itself). Sometimes it is safer to fully-specify everything:

     @reboot PYTHONPATH=~/lib/python /usr/local/bin/buildbot start /usr/home/buildbot/basedir

Take the time to get the @reboot job set up. Otherwise, things will work fine for a while, but the first power outage or system reboot you have will stop the buildslave with nothing but the cries of sorrowful developers to remind you that it has gone away.


Next: , Previous: Starting the buildslave, Up: Troubleshooting

2.9.2 Connecting to the buildmaster

If the buildslave cannot connect to the buildmaster, the reason should be described in the twistd.log logfile. Some common problems are an incorrect master hostname or port number, or a mistyped bot name or password. If the buildslave loses the connection to the master, it is supposed to attempt to reconnect with an exponentially-increasing backoff. Each attempt (and the time of the next attempt) will be logged. If you get impatient, just manually stop and re-start the buildslave.

When the buildmaster is restarted, all slaves will be disconnected, and will attempt to reconnect as usual. The reconnect time will depend upon how long the buildmaster is offline (i.e. how far up the exponential backoff curve the slaves have travelled). Again, buildbot stop BASEDIR; buildbot start BASEDIR will speed up the process.


Previous: Connecting to the buildmaster, Up: Troubleshooting

2.9.3 Forcing Builds

From the buildmaster's main status web page, you can force a build to be run on your build slave. Figure out which column is for a builder that runs on your slave, click on that builder's name, and the page that comes up will have a “Force Build” button. Fill in the form, hit the button, and a moment later you should see your slave's twistd.log filling with commands being run. Using pstree or top should also reveal the cvs/make/gcc/etc processes being run by the buildslave. Note that the same web page should also show the admin and host information files that you configured earlier.


Next: , Previous: Installation, Up: Top

3 Concepts

This chapter defines some of the basic concepts that the Buildbot uses. You'll need to understand how the Buildbot sees the world to configure it properly.


Next: , Previous: Concepts, Up: Concepts

3.1 Version Control Systems

These source trees come from a Version Control System of some kind. CVS and Subversion are two popular ones, but the Buildbot supports others. All VC systems1 have some notion of an upstream repository which acts as a server, from which clients can obtain source trees according to various parameters. The VC repository provides source trees of various projects, for different branches, and from various points in time. The first thing we have to do is to specify which source tree we want to get.


Next: , Previous: Version Control Systems, Up: Version Control Systems

3.1.1 Generalizing VC Systems

For the purposes of the Buildbot, we will try to generalize all VC systems as having repositories that each provide sources for a variety of projects. Each project is defined as a directory tree with source files. The individual files may each have revisions, but we ignore that and treat the project as a whole as having a set of revisions. Each time someone commits a change to the project, a new revision becomes available. These revisions can be described by a tuple with two items: the first is a branch tag, and the second is some kind of timestamp or revision stamp. Complex projects may have multiple branch tags, but there is always a default branch. The timestamp may be an actual timestamp (such as the -D option to CVS), or it may be a monotonically-increasing transaction number (such as the change number used by SVN and P4, or the revision number used by Arch, or a labeled tag used in CVS)2. The SHA1 revision ID used by Monotone is also a kind of revision stamp, in that it specifies a unique copy of the source tree.

When we aren't intending to make any changes to the sources we check out (at least not any that need to be committed back upstream), there are two basic ways to use a VC system:

Build personnel or CM staff typically use the first approach: the build that results is (ideally) completely specified by the two parameters given to the VC system: repository and revision tag. This gives QA and end-users something concrete to point at when reporting bugs.

Developers are more likely to use the second approach: each morning the developer does an update to pull in the changes committed by the team over the last day. These builds are not easy to fully specify: it depends upon exactly when you did a checkout, and upon what local changes the developer has in their tree. Developers do not normally tag each build they produce, because there is usually significant overhead involved in creating these tags. Recreating the trees used by one of these builds can be a challenge. Some VC systems may provide implicit tags (like a revision number), while others may allow the use of timestamps to mean the state of the tree at time X as opposed to a tree-state that has been explicitly marked.

The Buildbot is designed to help developers, so it usually works in terms of the latest sources as opposed to specific tagged revisions. However, it would really prefer to build from reproducible source trees, so implicit revisions are used whenever possible.


Next: , Previous: Generalizing VC Systems, Up: Version Control Systems

3.1.2 Source Tree Specifications

So for the Buildbot's purposes we treat each VC system as a server which can take a list of specifications as input and produce a source tree as output. Some of these specifications are static: they are attributes of the builder and do not change over time. Others are more variable: each build will have a different value. The repository is changed over time by a sequence of Changes, each of which represents a single developer making changes to some set of files. These Changes are cumulative.

For normal builds, the Buildbot wants to get well-defined source trees that contain specific Changes, and exclude others that occurred later. We assume that the Changes arrive at the buildbot (through one of the mechanisms described in see Change Sources) in the same order in which they are committed to the repository. The Buildbot waits for the tree to become stable before initiating a build, for two reasons. The first is that developers frequently commit several changes in a group, even when the VC system provides ways to make atomic transactions involving multiple files at the same time. Running a build in the middle of these sets of changes would use an inconsistent set of source files, and is likely to fail. The tree-stable-timer is intended to avoid these useless builds that include some of the developer's changes but not all. The second reason is that some VC systems (i.e. CVS) do not provide repository-wide transaction numbers, such that timestamps are the only way to refer to a specific repository state. These timestamps may be somewhat ambiguous, due to processing and notification delays. By waiting until the tree has been stable for, say, 10 minutes, we can choose a timestamp from the middle of that period to use for our source checkout, and then be reasonably sure that any clock-skew errors will not cause the build to be performed on an inconsistent set of source files.

The Builders always use the tree-stable-timer, with a timeout that is configured to reflect a reasonable tradeoff between build latency and change frequency. When the VC system provides coherent repository-wide revision markers (such as Subversion's revision numbers, or in fact anything other than CVS's timestamps), the resulting Build is simply performed against a source tree defined by that revision marker. When the VC system does not provide this, a timestamp from the middle of the tree-stable period is used to generate the source tree3.


Next: , Previous: Source Tree Specifications, Up: Version Control Systems

3.1.3 How Different VC Systems Specify Sources

For CVS, the static specifications are repository, module, and branch tag (which defaults to HEAD). In addition to those, each build uses a timestamp (or omits the timestamp to mean the latest). These parameters collectively specify a set of sources from which a build may be performed.

Subversion combines the repository, module, and branch into a single Subversion URL parameter. Within that scope, source checkouts can be specified by a numeric revision number (a repository-wide monotonically-increasing marker, such that each transaction that changes the repository is indexed by a different revision number), or a revision timestamp.

Arch specifies a repository by URL, as well as a version which is kind of like a branch name. Arch uses the word archive to represent the repository. Arch lets you push changes from one archive to another, removing the strict centralization required by CVS and SVN. It seems to retain the distinction between repository and working directory that most other VC systems use. For complex multi-module directory structures, Arch has a built-in build config layer with which the checkout process has two steps. First, an initial bootstrap checkout is performed to retrieve a set of build-config files. Second, one of these files is used to figure out which archives/modules should be used to populate subdirectories of the initial checkout.

Darcs doesn't really have the notion of a single master repository. Nor does it really have branches. In Darcs, each working directory is also a repository, and there are operations to push and pull patches from one of these repositories to another. For the Buildbot's purposes, all you need to do is specify the URL of a repository that you want to build from. The build slave will then pull the latest patches from that repository and build them.


Previous: How Different VC Systems Specify Sources, Up: Version Control Systems

3.1.4 Attributes of Changes

Each Change has a who attribute, which specifies which developer is responsible for the change. This is a string which comes from a namespace controlled by the VC repository. Frequently this means it is a username on the host which runs the repository, but not all VC systems require this (Arch, for example, would use a fully-qualified Arch ID, which looks like an email address). Each StatusNotifier will map the who attribute into something appropriate for their particular means of communication: an email address, an IRC handle, etc.

Each Change can have a revision attribute, which describes how to get a tree with a specific state: a tree which includes this Change (and all that came before it) but none that come after it. If this information is unavailable, the .revision attribute will be None. These revisions are provided by the ChangeSource, and consumed by the computeSourceRevision method in the appropriate step.Source class.

CVS
revision is an int, seconds since the epoch
SVN
revision is an int, a transation number (r%d)
Darcs
does not yet use revision
Arch
revision is a string, ending in –patch-%d
Bazaar
same as Arch
P4
revision is an int, the transaction number

The Change might also have a branch attribute. This is primarily intended to represent the CVS named branch (since CVS does not embed the branch in the pathname like many of the other systems), however it could be used for other purposes as well (e.g. some VC systems might allow commits to be marked as cosmetic, or docs-only, or something). The Build, in its isBranchImportant method, gets to decide whether the branch is important or not. This allows you to configure Builds which only fire on changes to a specific branch. For a change to trigger a build, both the branch must be important, and at least one of the files inside the change must be considered important.


Next: , Previous: Version Control Systems, Up: Concepts

3.2 Changes

What is a Change?


Previous: Changes, Up: Concepts

3.3 Users

Buildbot has a somewhat limited awareness of users. It assumes the world consists of a set of developers, each of whom can be described by a couple of simple attributes. These developers make changes to the source code, causing builds which may succeed or fail.

Each developer is primarily known through the source control system. Each Change object that arrives is tagged with a who field that typically gives the account name (on the repository machine) of the user responsible for that change. This string is the primary key by which the User is known, and is displayed on the HTML status pages and in each Build's “blamelist”.

To do more with the User than just refer to them, this username needs to be mapped into an address of some sort. The responsibility for this mapping is left up to the status module which needs the address. The core code knows nothing about email addresses or IRC nicknames, just user names.


Next: , Previous: Users, Up: Users

3.3.1 Doing Things With Users

Each Change has a single User who is responsible for that Change. Most Builds have a set of Changes: the Build represents the first time these Changes have been built and tested by the BuildBot. The build has a “blamelist” that consists of a simple union of the Users responsible for all the Build's Changes.

The Build provides (through the IBuildStatus interface) a list of Users who are “involved” in the build. For now this is equal to the blamelist, but in the future it will be expanded to include a “build sheriff” (a person who is “on duty” at that time and responsible for watching over all builds that occur during their shift), as well as per-module owners who simply want to keep watch over their domain (chosen by subdirectory or a regexp matched against the filenames pulled out of the Changes). The Involved Users are those who probably have an interest in the results of any given build.

In the future, Buildbot will acquire the concept of “Problems”, which last longer than builds and have beginnings and ends. For example, a test case which passed in one build and then failed in the next is a Problem. The Problem lasts until the test case starts passing again, at which point the Problem is said to be “resolved”.

If there appears to be a code change went into the tree at the same time as the test started failing, that Change is marked as being resposible for the Problem, and the user who made the change is added to the Problem's “Guilty” list. In addition to this user, there may be others who share responsibility for the Problem (module owners, sponsoring developers). In addition to the Responsible Users, there may be a set of Interested Users, who take an interest in the fate of the Problem.

Problems therefore have sets of Users who may want to be kept aware of the condition of the problem as it changes over time. If configured, the Buildbot can pester everyone on the Responsible list with increasing harshness until the problem is resolved, with the most harshness reserved for the Guilty parties themselves. The Interested Users may merely be told when the problem starts and stops, as they are not actually responsible for fixing anything.


Next: , Previous: Doing Things With Users, Up: Users

3.3.2 Email Addresses

The buildbot.status.mail.MailNotifier class provides a status target which can send email about the results of each build. It accepts a static list of email addresses to which each message should be delivered, but it can also be configured to send mail to the Build's Interested Users. To do this, it needs a way to convert User names into email addresses.

For many VC systems, the User Name is actually an account name on the system which hosts the repository. As such, turning the name into an email address is a simple matter of appending “@repositoryhost.com”. Some projects use other kinds of mappings (for example the preferred email address may be at “project.org” despite the repository having an unrelated hostname), and some VC systems have full separation between the concept of a user and that of an account on the repository host (like Perforce). Some systems (like Arch) put a full contact email address in every change.

To convert these names to addresses, the MailNotifier uses an EmailLookup object. This provides a .getAddress method which accepts a name and (eventually) returns an address. The default MailNotifier module provides an EmailLookup which simply appends a static string, configurable when the notifier is created. To create more complex behaviors (perhaps using an LDAP lookup, or using “finger” on a central host to determine a preferred address for the developer), provide a different object as the lookup argument.

In the future, when the Problem mechanism has been set up, the Buildbot will need to send mail to arbitrary Users. It will do this by locating a MailNotifier-like object among all the buildmaster's status targets, and asking it to send messages to various Users. This means the User-to-address mapping only has to be set up once, in your MailNotifier, and every email message the buildbot emits will take advantage of it.


Next: , Previous: Email Addresses, Up: Users

3.3.3 IRC Nicknames

Like MailNotifier, the buildbot.status.words.IRC class provides a status target which can announce the results of each build. It also provides an interactive interface by responding to online queries posted in the channel or sent as private messages.

The buildbot can be configured map User names to IRC nicknames, to watch for the recent presence of these nicknames, and to deliver build status messages to the interested parties. Like MailNotifier does for email addresses, the IRC object has an IRCLookup which is responsible for nicknames. The mapping can be set up statically, or it can be updated by online users themselves (by claiming a username with some kind of “buildbot: i am user warner” commands).

Once the mapping is established, the rest of the buildbot can ask the IRC object to send messages to various users. It can report on the likelihood that the user saw the given message (based upon how long the user has been inactive on the channel), which might prompt the Problem Hassler logic to send them an email message instead.


Previous: IRC Nicknames, Up: Users

3.3.4 Live Status Clients

The Buildbot also offers a PB-based status client interface which can display real-time build status in a GUI panel on the developer's desktop. This interface is normally anonymous, but it could be configured to let the buildmaster know which developer is using the status client. The status client could then be used as a message-delivery service, providing an alternative way to deliver low-latency high-interruption messages to the developer (like “hey, you broke the build”).


Next: , Previous: Concepts, Up: Top

4 Configuration

The buildbot's behavior is defined by the “config file”, which normally lives in the master.cfg file in the buildmaster's base directory (but this can be changed with an option to buildbot master). This file completely specifies which Builders are to be run, which slaves they should use, how Changes should be tracked, and where the status information is to be sent. The buildmaster's .tac file names the base directory, everything else comes from the config file.

A sample config file was installed for you when you created the buildmaster, but you will need to edit it before your buildbot will do anything useful.

This chapter gives an overview of the format of this file and the various sections in it. You will need to read the later chapters to understand how to fill in each section properly.


Next: , Previous: Configuration, Up: Configuration

4.1 Config File Format

The config file is, fundamentally, just a piece of Python code which defines a dictionary named BuildmasterConfig, with a number of keys that are treated specially. You don't need to know Python to do basic configuration, though, you can just copy the syntax of the sample file. If you are comfortable writing Python code, however, you can use all the power of a full programming language to achieve more complicated configurations.

The BuildmasterConfig name is the only one which matters: all other names defined during the execution of the file are discarded. When parsing the config file, the Buildmaster generally compares the old configuration with the new one and performs the minumum set of actions necessary to bring the buildbot up to date: Builders which are not changed are left untouched, and Builders which are modified get to keep their old event history.

Basic Python syntax: comments start with a hash character (“#”), tuples are defined with (parenthesis, pairs), arrays are defined with [square, brackets], tuples and arrays are mostly interchangeable. Dictionaries (data structures which map “keys” to “values”) are defined with curly braces: {'key1': 'value1', 'key2': 'value2'} . Function calls (and object instantiation) can use named parameters, like w = html.Waterfall(http_port=8010).

The config file starts with a series of import statements, which make various kinds of Steps and Status targets available for later use. The main BuildmasterConfig dictionary is created, then it is populated with a variety of keys. These keys are broken roughly into the following sections, each of which is documented in the rest of this chapter:

The config file can use a few names which are placed into its namespace:

basedir
the base directory for the buildmaster. This string is un-expanded, so it might start with a tilde which needs to be expanded before use. The config file is located in os.path.expanduser(os.path.join(basedir, 'master.cfg'))


Next: , Previous: Config File Format, Up: Configuration

4.2 Loading the Config File

The config file is only read at specific points in time. It is first read when the buildmaster is launched. Once it is running, there are various ways to ask it to reload the config file. If you are on the system hosting the buildmaster, you can send a SIGHUP signal to it: the buildbot tool has a shortcut for this:

     buildbot sighup BASEDIR

The debug tool (buildbot debugclient --master HOST:PORT) has a “Reload .cfg” button which will also trigger a reload. In the future, there will be other ways to accomplish this step (probably a password-protected button on the web page, as well as a privileged IRC command).


Next: , Previous: Loading the Config File, Up: Configuration

4.3 Defining the Project

There are a couple of basic settings that you use to tell the buildbot what project it is working on. This information is used by status reporters to let users find out more about the codebase being exercised by this particular Buildbot installation.

     c['projectName'] = "Buildbot"
     c['projectURL'] = "http://buildbot.sourceforge.net/"
     c['buildbotURL'] = "http://localhost:8010/"

projectName is a short string will be used to describe the project that this buildbot is working on. For example, it is used as the title of the waterfall HTML page.

projectURL is a string that gives a URL for the project as a whole. HTML status displays will show projectName as a link to projectURL, to provide a link from buildbot HTML pages to your project's home page.

The buildbotURL string should point to the location where the buildbot's internal web server (usually the html.Waterfall page) is visible. This typically uses the port number set when you create the Waterfall object, the buildbot needs your help to figure out a suitable externally-visible host name.

When status notices are sent to users (either by email or over IRC), buildbotURL will be used to create a URL to the specific build or problem that they are being notified about. It will also be made available to queriers (over IRC) who want to find out where to get more information about this buildbot.


Next: , Previous: Defining the Project, Up: Configuration

4.4 Listing Change Sources

The c['sources'] key is a list of ChangeSource instances4. This defines how the buildmaster learns about source code changes. More information about what goes here is available in See Getting Source Code Changes.

     c['sources'] = [buildbot.changes.pb.PBChangeSource()]


Next: , Previous: Listing Change Sources, Up: Configuration

4.5 Setting the slaveport

The buildmaster will listen on a TCP port of your choosing for connections from buildslaves. It can also use this port for connections from remote Change Sources, status clients, and debug tools. This port should be visible to the outside world, and you'll need to tell your buildslave admins about your choice.

It does not matter which port you pick, as long it is externally visible, however you should probably use something larger than 1024, since most operating systems don't allow non-root processes to bind to low-numbered ports.

     c['slavePortnum'] = 10000


Next: , Previous: Setting the slaveport, Up: Configuration

4.6 Buildslave Specifiers

The c['bots'] key is a list of known buildslaves. Each buildslave is defined by a tuple of (slavename, slavepassword). These are the same two values that need to be provided to the buildslave administrator when they create the buildslave.

     c['bots'] = [('bot-solaris', 'solarispasswd'),
                  ('bot-bsd', 'bsdpasswd'),
                 ]

The slavenames must be unique, of course. The password exists to prevent evildoers from interfering with the buildbot by inserting their own (broken) buildslaves into the system.

Buildslaves with an unrecognized slavename or a non-matching password will be rejected when they attempt to connect.


Next: , Previous: Buildslave Specifiers, Up: Configuration

4.7 Defining Builders

The c['builders'] key is a list of dictionaries which specify the Builders. The Buildmaster runs a collection of Builders, each of which handles a single type of build (e.g. full versus quick), on a single build slave. A Buildbot which makes sure that the latest code (“HEAD”) compiles correctly across four separate architecture will have four Builders, each performing the same build but on different slaves (one per platform).

Each Builder gets a separate column in the waterfall display. In general, each Builder runs independently (although various kinds of interlocks can cause one Builder to have an effect on another).

Each Builder specification dictionary has several required keys:

name
This specifies the Builder's name, which is used in status reports.
slavename
This specifies which buildslave will be used by this Builder. slavename must appear in the c['bots'] list. Each buildslave can accomodate multiple Builders.
builddir
This specifies the name of a subdirectory (under the base directory) in which everything related to this builder will be placed. On the buildmaster, this holds build status information. On the buildslave, this is where checkouts, compiles, and tests are run.
factory
This is a buildbot.process.factory.BuildFactory instance which controls both when the build is run, and how it is performed. Full details appear in their own chapter, See Build Process. Parameters like the location of the CVS repository and the compile-time options used for the build are generally provided as arguments to the factory's constructor.

Other optional keys may be set on each Builder:

periodicBuildTime
If set, a build will be run every periodicBuildTime seconds. This may be useful when you first get started using the buildbot, before you have a Change Source configured. E.g., if you want a buildbot which just recompiles the tree every hour, set this to 60*60.
category
If provided, this is a string that identifies a category for the builder to be a part of. Status clients can limit themselves to a subset of the available categories. A common use for this is to add new builders to your setup (for a new module, or for a new buildslave) that do not work correctly yet and allow you to integrate them with the active builders. You can put these new builders in a test category, make your main status clients ignore them, and have only private status clients pick them up. As soon as they work, you can move them over to the active category.


Next: , Previous: Defining Builders, Up: Configuration

4.8 Interlocks

c['interlocks'] is a list of Interlock specifications. Each one is a 3-tuple of interlock-name, feeder-list, and watcher-list. The interlock name is a unique string which distinguishes one interlock from another. The feeder-list is a list of strings which name the Builders that this interlock depends upon: the interlock will not <q>open</q> for any given Change until all those Builders have completed successfully. The watcher-list is a list of strings which name the Builders that wait for this interlock to open. Those Builders will not run until their Interlocks' feeding Builders have passed.

This feature is scheduled to be decomposed into a more useful pair: Dependency and Lock. The first indicates that one build depends upon another completing correctly, while the second indicates two builds that may not be run at the same time.

Lock are useful when running multiple Builders on the same (slow) buildslave, where running the builds in parallel would cause thrashing.


Next: , Previous: Interlocks, Up: Configuration

4.9 Defining Status Targets

The Buildmaster has a variety of ways to present build status to various users. Each such delivery method is a “Status Target” object in the configuration's status list. To add status targets, you just append more objects to this list:

     c['status'] = []
     
     from buildbot.status import html
     c['status'].append(html.Waterfall(http_port=8010))
     
     from buildbot.status import mail
     m = mail.MailNotifier(fromaddr="buildbot@localhost",
                           extraRecipients=["builds@lists.example.com"],
                           sendToInterestedUsers=False)
     c['status'].append(m)
     
     from buildbot.status import words
     c['status'].append(words.IRC(host="irc.example.com", nick="bb",
                                  channels=["#example"]))

Status delivery has its own chapter, See Status Delivery, in which all the built-in status targets are documented.


Previous: Defining Status Targets, Up: Configuration

4.10 Debug options

If you set c['debugPassword'], then you can connect to the buildmaster with the diagnostic tool launched by buildbot debugclient MASTER:PORT. From this tool, you can reload the config file, manually force builds, and inject changes, which may be useful for testing your buildmaster without actually commiting changes to your repository (or before you have the Change Sources set up). The debug tool uses the same port number as the slaves do: c['slavePortnum'], and is authenticated with this password.

     c['debugPassword'] = "debugpassword"

If you set c['manhole'] to an instance of the buildbot.master.Manhole class, you can telnet into the buildmaster and get an interactive Python shell, which may be useful for debugging buildbot internals. It is probably only useful for buildbot developers.

     from buildbot.master import Manhole
     c['manhole'] = Manhole(9999, "admin", "password")


Next: , Previous: Configuration, Up: Top

5 Getting Source Code Changes

The most common way to use the Buildbot is centered around the idea of Source Trees: a directory tree filled with source code of some form which can be compiled and/or tested. Some projects use languages that don't involve any compilation step: nevertheless there may be a build phase where files are copied or rearranged into a form that is suitable for installation. Some projects do not have unit tests, and the Buildbot is merely helping to make sure that the sources can compile correctly. But in all of these cases, the thing-being-tested is a single source tree.

A Version Control System mantains a source tree, and tells the buildmaster when it changes. The first step of each Build is typically to acquire a copy of some version of this tree.

This chapter describes how the Buildbot thinks about source trees and Changes, and how it learns about them.


Next: , Previous: Getting Source Code Changes, Up: Getting Source Code Changes

5.1 Change Sources

Each Buildmaster watches a single source tree. Changes can be provided by a variety of ChangeSource types, however any given project will typically have only a single ChangeSource active. This section provides a list of ChangeSource types and descriptions of how to set them up.

Each source tree has a nominal top. Each Change has a list of filenames, which are all relative to this top location. The ChangeSource is responsible for doing whatever is necessary to accomplish this. This generally involves a Prefix: a partial pathname which is stripped from the front of all filenames provided to the ChangeSource. Files which are outside this sub-tree are ignored by the ChangeSource: it does not generate Changes for those files.


Next: , Previous: Change Sources, Up: Change Sources

5.1.1 Choosing ChangeSources

The master.cfg configuration file has a dictionary key named BuildmasterConfig['sources'], which holds a list of IChangeSource objects. The config file will typically create an object from one of the classes described below and stuff it into the list.

     s = FreshCVSSourceNewcred(host="host", port=4519,
                               user="alice", passwd="secret",
                               prefix="Twisted")
     BuildmasterConfig['sources'] = [s]


Next: , Previous: Choosing ChangeSources, Up: Change Sources

5.1.2 CVSToys - PBService

The CVSToys package provides a server which runs on the machine that hosts the CVS repository it watches. It has a variety of ways to distribute commit notifications, and offers a flexible regexp-based way to filter out uninteresting changes. One of the notification options is named PBService and works by listening on a TCP port for clients. These clients subscribe to hear about commit notifications.

The buildmaster has a PBService client built in. There are two versions of it, one for old versions of CVSToys (1.0.9 and earlier) which used the oldcred authentication framework, and one for newer versions (1.0.10 and later) which use newcred. Both are classes in the buildbot.changes.freshcvs package.

FreshCVSSourceNewcred objects are created with the following parameters:

host and port
these specify where the CVSToys server can be reached
user and passwd
these specify the login information for the CVSToys server (freshcvs). These must match the server's values, which are defined in the freshCfg configuration file (which lives in the CVSROOT directory of the repository).
prefix
this is the prefix to be found and stripped from filenames delivered by the CVSToys server. Most projects live in sub-directories of the main repository, as siblings of the CVSROOT sub-directory, so typically this prefix is set to that top sub-directory name.


Next: , Previous: CVSToys - PBService, Up: Change Sources

5.1.3 CVSToys - mail notification

CVSToys also provides a MailNotification action which will send email to a list of recipients for each commit. This tends to work better than using /bin/mail from within the CVSROOT/loginfo file directly, as CVSToys will batch together all files changed during the same CVS invocation, and can provide more information (like creating a ViewCVS URL for each file changed).

The Buildbot's FCMaildirSource is a ChangeSource which knows how to parse these CVSToys messages and turn them into Change objects. It watches a Maildir for new messages. The usually installation process looks like:

  1. Create a mailing list, projectname-commits.
  2. In CVSToys' freshCfg file, use a MailNotification action to send commit mail to this mailing list.
  3. Subscribe the buildbot user to the mailing list.
  4. Configure your .qmail or .forward file to deliver these messages into a maildir.
  5. In the Buildbot's master.cfg file, use a FCMaildirSource to watch the maildir for commit messages.

The FCMaildirSource is created with two parameters: the directory name of the maildir root, and the prefix to strip.


Next: , Previous: CVSToys - mail notification, Up: Change Sources

5.1.4 Other mail notification ChangeSources

There are other types of maildir-watching ChangeSources, which only differ in the function used to parse the message body.

SyncmailMaildirSource knows how to parse the message format used in mail sent by Syncmail.

BonsaiMaildirSource parses messages sent out by Bonsai.


Previous: Other mail notification ChangeSources, Up: Change Sources

5.1.5 PBChangeSource

The last kind of ChangeSource actually listens on a TCP port for clients to connect and push change notices into the Buildmaster. This is used by the Subversion notification tool (in contrib/svn_buildbot.py), which is run by the SVN server and connects to the buildmaster directly. This is also useful for creating new kinds of change sources that work on a push model instead of some kind of subscription scheme, for example a script which is run out of a .forward file.

This ChangeSource can be configured to listen on its own TCP port, or it can share the port that the buildmaster is already using for the buildslaves to connect. (This is possible because the PBChangeSource uses the same protocol as the buildslaves, and they can be distinguished by the username attribute used when the initial connection is established). It might be useful to have it listen on a different port it, for example, you wanted to establish different firewall rules for that port. You could allow only the SVN repository machine access to the PBChangeSource port, while allowing only the buildslave machines access to the slave port. Or you could just expose one port and run everything over it. Note: this feature is not yet implemented, the PBChangeSource will always share the slave port and will always have a user name of change, and a passwd of changepw. These limitations will be removed in the future..

The PBChangeSource is created with the following arguments:

port
which port to listen on. If None (which is the default), it shares the port used for buildslave connections. Not Implemented, always set to None.
user and passwd
the user/passwd account information that the client program must use to connect. Defaults to change and changepw. user is currently always set to change, passwd is always set to changepw.
prefix
the prefix to be found and stripped from filenames delivered over the connection.


Next: , Previous: Change Sources, Up: Getting Source Code Changes

5.2 Sending Changes to the Buildmaster


Previous: Sending Changes at the Buildmaster, Up: Getting Source Code Changes

5.3 Receiving Changes


Next: , Previous: Getting Source Code Changes, Up: Top

6 Build Process


Next: , Previous: Build Process, Up: Build Process

6.1 Build Steps

This section lists all the standard BuildStep objects available for use in a Build, and the parameters which can be used to control each.


Next: , Previous: Build Steps, Up: Build Steps

6.1.1 Common Parameters

The standard Build (described in the <a href="factories.xhtml">BuildFactory</a> docs) runs a series of BuildSteps in order, only stopping if one of them requests that the build be halted. It collects status information from each one to create an overall build status (of SUCCESS, WARNINGS, or FAILURE).

All BuildSteps accept some common parameters to control how their individual status affects the overall build.

Arguments common to all BuildStep subclasses:

name
the name used to describe the step on the status display. It is also used to give a name to any LogFiles created by this step.
haltOnFailure
if True, a FAILURE of this build step will cause the build to halt immediately with an overall result of FAILURE.
flunkOnWarnings
when True, a WARNINGS or FAILURE of this build step will mark the overall build as FAILURE. The remaining steps will still be executed.
flunkOnFailure
when True, a FAILURE of this build step will mark the overall build as a FAILURE. The remaining steps will still be executed.
warnOnWarnings
when True, a WARNINGS or FAILURE of this build step will mark the overall build as having WARNINGS. The remaining steps will still be executed.
warnOnFailure
when True, a FAILURE of this build step will mark the overall build as having WARNINGS. The remaining steps will still be executed.


Next: , Previous: Common Parameters, Up: Build Steps

6.1.2 ShellCommand

This is a useful base class for just about everything you might want to do during a build (except for the initial source checkout). It runs a single command in a child shell on the build slave. All stdout/stderr is recorded into a LogFile. The step finishes with a status of FAILURE if the command's exit code is non-zero, otherwise it has a status of SUCCESS.

The preferred way to specify the command is with a list of argv strings, since this allows for spaces in filenames and avoids doing any fragile shell-escaping. You can also specify the command with a single string, in which case the string is given to '/bin/sh -c COMMAND' for parsing.

All ShellCommands are run by default in the “workdir”, which defaults to the build subdirectory of the slave builder's base directory. The absolute path of the workdir will thus be the slave's basedir (set as an option to mktap) plus the builder's basedir (set in the builder's ['builddir'] key in master.cfg) plus the workdir itself (a class-level attribute of the BuildFactory, defaults to build).

ShellCommand Arguments:

command
a list of strings (preferred) or single string (discouraged) which specifies the command to be run
env
a dictionary of environment strings which will be added to the child command's environment.
want_stdout
if False, stdout from the child process is discarded rather than being sent to the buildmaster for inclusion in the step's LogFile.
want_stderr
like want_stdout but for stderr. Note that commands run through a PTY do not have separate stdout/stderr streams: both are merged into stdout.
timeout
if the command fails to produce any output for this many seconds, it is assumed to be locked up and will be killed.


Next: , Previous: ShellCommand, Up: Build Steps

6.1.3 Simple ShellCommand Subclasses

Several subclasses of ShellCommand are provided as starting points for common build steps. These are all very simple: they just override a few parameters so you don't have to specify them yourself, making the master.cfg file less verbose.


Next: , Previous: Simple ShellCommand Subclasses, Up: Simple ShellCommand Subclasses
6.1.3.1 Configure

This is intended to handle the ./configure step from autoconf-style projects, or the perl Makefile.PL step from perl MakeMaker.pm-style modules. The default command is ./configure but you can change this by providing a command= parameter.


Next: , Previous: Configure, Up: Simple ShellCommand Subclasses
6.1.3.2 Compile

This is meant to handle compiling or building a project written in C. The default command is make all. When the compile is finished, the log file is scanned for GCC error/warning messages and a summary log is created with any problems that were seen (TODO: the summary is not yet created).


Previous: Compile, Up: Simple ShellCommand Subclasses
6.1.3.3 Test

This is meant to handle unit tests. The default command is make test, and the warnOnFailure flag is set.


Previous: Simple ShellCommand Subclasses, Up: Build Steps

6.1.4 Source Checkout

The first step of any build is typically to acquire the source code from which the build will be performed. There are several classes to handle this, each for a different source control system. For a description of how Buildbot treats source control in general, take a look at the <a href="source.xhtml">Getting Sources</a> documentation.

All source checkout steps accept some common parameters to control how they get the sources and where they should be placed. The remaining per-system parameters are mostly to specify where exactly the sources are coming from.

mode
a string describing the kind of VC operation that is desired. Defaults to update.
update
specifies that the CVS checkout/update should be performed directly into the workdir. Each build is performed in the same directory, allowing for incremental builds. This minimizes disk space, bandwidth, and CPU time. However, it may encounter problems if the build process does not handle dependencies properly (sometimes you must do a 'clean build' to make sure everything gets compiled), or if source files are deleted but generated files can influence test behavior (e.g. python's .pyc files), or when source directories are deleted but generated files prevent CVS from removing them. Builds ought to be correct regardless of whether they are done “from scratch” or incrementally, but it is useful to test both kinds: this mode exercises the incremental-build style.
copy
specifies that the CVS workspace should be maintained in a separate directory (called the 'copydir'), using checkout or update as necessary. For each build, a new workdir is created with a copy of the source tree (rm -rf workdir; cp -r copydir workdir). This doubles the disk space required, but keeps the bandwidth low (update instead of a full checkout). A full 'clean' build is performed each time. This avoids any generated-file build problems, but is still occasionally vulnerable to CVS problems such as a repository being manually rearranged, causing CVS errors on update which are not an issue with a full checkout.
clobber
specifes that the working directory should be deleted each time, necessitating a full checkout for each build. This insures a clean build off a complete checkout, avoiding any of the problems described above. This mode exercises the “from-scratch” build style.
export
this is like clobber, except that the 'cvs export' command is used to create the working directory. This command removes all CVS metadata files (the CVS/ directories) from the tree, which is sometimes useful for creating source tarballs (to avoid including the metadata in the tar file).

workdir
like all Steps, this indicates the directory where the build will take place. Source Steps are special in that they perform some operations outside of the workdir (like creating the workdir itself).
alwaysUseLatest
if True, bypass the usual “update to the last Change” behavior, and always update to the latest changes instead.
retry
If set, this specifies a tuple of (delay, repeats) which means that when a full VC checkout fails, it should be retried up to repeats times, waiting delay seconds between attempts. If you don't provide this, it defaults to None, which means VC operations should not be retried. This is provided to make life easier for buildslaves which are stuck behind poor network connections.

My habit as a developer is to do a cvs update and make each morning. Problems can occur, either because of bad code being checked in, or by incomplete dependencies causing a partial rebuild to fail where a complete from-scratch build might succeed. A quick Builder which emulates this incremental-build behavior would use the mode='update' setting.

On the other hand, other kinds of dependency problems can cause a clean build to fail where a partial build might succeed. This frequently results from a link step that depends upon an object file that was removed from a later version of the tree: in the partial tree, the object file is still around (even though the Makefiles no longer know how to create it).

“official” builds (traceable builds performed from a known set of source revisions) are always done as clean builds, to make sure it is not influenced by any uncontrolled factors (like leftover files from a previous build). A “full” Builder which behaves this way would want to use the mode='clobber' setting.


Next: , Previous: Source Checkout, Up: Source Checkout
6.1.4.1 CVS

The CVS build step performs a CVS checkout or update. It takes the following arguments:

cvsroot
(required): specify the CVSROOT value, which points to a CVS repository, probably on a remote machine. For example, the cvsroot value you would use to get a copy of the Buildbot source code is :pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/buildbot
cvsmodule
(required): specify the cvs module, which is generally a subdirectory of the CVSROOT. The cvsmodule for the Buildbot source code is buildbot.
branch
a string which will be used in a -r argument. This is most useful for specifying a branch to work on. Defaults to HEAD.
global_options
a list of flags to be put before the verb in the CVS command.
checkoutDelay
if set, the number of seconds to put between the timestamp of the last known Change and the value used for the -D option. Defaults to half of the parent Build's treeStableTimer.


Next: , Previous: CVS, Up: Source Checkout
6.1.4.2 SVN

The SVN build step performs a Subversion checkout or update. It takes the following arguments.

svnurl
(required): this specifies the URL argument that will be given to the svn checkout command. It dictates both where the repository is located and which sub-tree should be extracted. In this respect, it is like a combination of the CVS cvsroot and cvsmodule arguments. For example, if you are using a remote Subversion repository which is accessible through HTTP at a URL of http://svn.example.com/repos, and you wanted to check out the trunk/calc sub-tree, you would use svnurl="http://svn.example.com/repos/trunk/calc" as an argument to your SVN step.


Next: , Previous: SVN, Up: Source Checkout
6.1.4.3 Darcs

The Darcs build step performs a Darcs checkout or update. It takes the following arguments:

repourl
(required): the URL at which the Darcs source repository is available.


Next: , Previous: Darcs, Up: Source Checkout
6.1.4.4 Arch

The Arch build step performs an Arch checkout or update using the tla client. It takes the following arguments:

url
(required): this specifies the URL at which the Arch source archive is available.
version
(required): this specifies which “development line” (like a branch) should be used.
archive
(optional): Each repository knows its own archive name. If this parameter is provided, it must match the repository's archive name. The parameter is accepted for compatibility with the Bazaar step, below.


Next: , Previous: Arch, Up: Source Checkout
6.1.4.5 Bazaar

Bazaar is an alternate implementation of the Arch VC system, which uses a client named baz. The checkout semantics are just different enough from tla that there is a separate BuildStep for it.

It takes exactly the same arguments as Arch, except that the archive= parameter is required. (baz does not emit the archive name when you do baz register-archive, so we must provide it ourselves).


Previous: Bazaar, Up: Source Checkout
6.1.4.6 P4Sync

The P4Sync build step performs a Perforce update. It is a temporary facility: a more complete P4 checkout step (named P4) will eventually replace it. This step requires significant manual setup on each build slave. It takes the following arguments.

p4port
(required): the host:port string describing how to get to the P4 Depot (repository), used as the P4PORT environment variable for all p4 commands


Previous: Build Steps, Up: Build Process

6.2 Build Factories

Each Builder is equipped with a <q>build factory</q>, which is responsible for producing the actual Build objects that perform each build. This factory is created in the configuration file, and attached to a Builder through the 'factory' element of its dictionary.

The standard BuildFactory object creates Build objects by default. These Builds will each execute a collection of BuildSteps in a fixed sequence. Each step can affect the results of the build, but in general there is little intelligence to tie the different steps together. You can create subclasses of Build to implement more sophisticated build processes, and then use a subclass of BuildFactory to create instances of your new Build subclass.


Next: , Previous: Build Factories, Up: Build Factories

6.2.1 BuildStep Objects

The steps used by these builds are all subclasses of BuildStep. The standard ones provided with Buildbot are documented later, See Build Steps. You can also write your own subclasses to use in builds.

The basic behavior for a BuildStep is to:

More sophisticated steps may produce additional information and provide it to later build steps, or store it in the factory to provide to later builds.


Next: , Previous: BuildStep Objects, Up: Build Factories

6.2.2 BuildFactory

The default BuildFactory, provided in the buildbot.process.factory module, is constructed with a list of “BuildStep specifications”: a list of (step_class, kwargs) tuples for each. When asked to create a Build, it loads the list of steps into the new Build object. When the Build is actually started, these step specifications are used to create the actual set of BuildSteps, which are then executed one at a time. For example, a build which consists of a CVS checkout followed by a make build would be constructed as follows:

     from buildbot.process import step, factory
     from buildbot.factory import s
     # s is a convenience function, defined with:
     # def s(steptype, **kwargs): return (steptype, kwargs)
     
     f = factory.BuildFactory([s(step.CVS,
                                 cvsroot=CVSROOT, cvsmodule="project",
                                 mode="update"),
                               s(step.Compile, command=["make", "build"])])

Each step can affect the build process in the following ways:

In addition, each Step produces its own results, may create logfiles, etc. However only the flags described above have any effect on the build as a whole.

The pre-defined BuildSteps like CVS and Compile have reasonably appropriate flags set on them already. For example, without a source tree there is no point in continuing the build, so the CVS class has the haltOnFailure flag set to True. Look in buildbot/process/step.py to see how the other Steps are marked.

Each Step is created with an additional workdir argument that indicates where its actions should take place. This is specified as a subdirectory of the slave builder's base directory, with a default value of build. This is only implemented as a step argument (as opposed to simply being a part of the base directory) because the CVS/SVN steps need to perform their checkouts from the parent directory.


Next: , Previous: BuildFactory, Up: BuildFactory
6.2.2.1 BuildFactory Attributes

Several attributes from the BuildFactory are copied into each Build.

treeStableTimer
provides the duration of the “tree-stable timer”, in seconds. Builds will wait until the tree has been seen no important changes for at least this long.
useProgress
(defaults to True): if True, the buildmaster keeps track of how long each step takes, so it can provide estimates of how long future builds will take. If builds are not expected to take a consistent amount of time (such as incremental builds in which a random set of files are recompiled or tested each time), this should be set to False to inhibit progress-tracking.


Previous: BuildFactory Attributes, Up: BuildFactory
6.2.2.2 Quick builds

The difference between a “full build” and a “quick build” is that quick builds are generally done incrementally, starting with the tree where the previous build was performed. That simply means that the source-checkout step should be given a mode='update' flag, to do the source update in-place.

In addition to that, the useProgress flag should be set to False. Incremental builds will (or at least the ought to) compile as few files as necessary, so they will take an unpredictable amount of time to run. Therefore it would be misleading to claim to predict how long the build will take.


Previous: BuildFactory, Up: Build Factories

6.2.3 Process-Specific build factories

Many projects use one of a few popular build frameworks to simplify the creation and maintenance of Makefiles or other compilation structures. Buildbot provides several pre-configured BuildFactory subclasses which let you build these projects with a minimum of fuss.


Next: , Previous: Process-Specific build factories, Up: Process-Specific build factories
6.2.3.1 GNUAutoconf

GNU Autoconf is a software portability tool, intended to make it possible to write programs in C (and other languages) which will run on a variety of UNIX-like systems. Most GNU software is built using autoconf. It is frequently used in combination with GNU automake. These tools both encourage a build process which usually looks like this:

     % CONFIG_ENV=foo ./configure --with-flags
     % make all
     % make check
     # make install

(except of course the Buildbot always skips the make install part).

The Buildbot's buildbot.process.factory.GNUAutoconf factory is designed to build projects which use GNU autoconf and/or automake. The configuration environment variables, the configure flags, and command lines used for the compile and test are all configurable, in general the default values will be suitable.

Example:

     # use the s() convenience function defined earlier
     f = factory.GNUAutoconf(source=s(step.SVN, svnurl=URL, mode="copy"),
                             flags=["--disable-nls"])

Required Arguments:

source
This argument must be a step specification tuple that provides a BuildStep to generate the source tree.

Optional Arguments:

configure
The command used to configure the tree. Defaults to ./configure. Accepts either a string or a list of shell argv elements.
configureEnv
The environment used for the initial configuration step. This accepts a dictionary which will be merged into the buildslave's normal environment. This is commonly used to provide things like CFLAGS="-O2 -g" (to turn off debug symbols during the compile). Defaults to an empty dictionary.
configureFlags
A list of flags to be appended to the argument list of the configure command. This is commonly used to enable or disable specific features of the autoconf-controlled package, like ["--without-x"] to disable windowing support. Defaults to an empty list.
compile
this is a shell command or list of argv values which is used to actually compile the tree. It defaults to make all. If set to None, the compile step is skipped.
test
this is a shell command or list of argv values which is used to run the tree's self-tests. It defaults to make check. If set to None, the test step is skipped.


Next: , Previous: GNUAutoconf, Up: Process-Specific build factories
6.2.3.2 CPAN

Most Perl modules available from the CPAN archive use the MakeMaker module to provide configuration, build, and test services. The standard build routine for these modules looks like:

     % perl Makefile.PL
     % make
     % make test
     # make install

(except again Buildbot skips the install step)

Buildbot provides a CPAN factory to compile and test these projects.

Arguments:

source
(required): A step specification tuple, that that used by GNUAutoconf.
perl
A string which specifies the perl executable to use. Defaults to just perl.


Next: , Previous: CPAN, Up: Process-Specific build factories
6.2.3.3 Python distutils

Most Python modules use the distutils package to provide configuration and build services. The standard build process looks like:

     % python ./setup.py build
     % python ./setup.py install

Unfortunately, although Python provides a standard unit-test framework named unittest, to the best of my knowledge distutils does not provide a standardized target to run such unit tests. (please let me know if I'm wrong, and I will update this factory).

The Distutils factory provides support for running the build part of this process. It accepts the same source= parameter as the other build factories.

Arguments:

source
(required): A step specification tuple, that that used by GNUAutoconf.
python
A string which specifies the python executable to use. Defaults to just python.
test
Provides a shell command which runs unit tests. This accepts either a string or a list. The default value is None, which disables the test step (since there is no common default command to run unit tests in distutils modules).


Previous: Python distutils, Up: Process-Specific build factories
6.2.3.4 Python/Twisted/trial projects

Twisted provides a unit test tool named trial which provides a few improvements over Python's built-in unittest module. Many python projects which use Twisted for their networking or application services also use trial for their unit tests. These modules are usually built and tested with something like the following:

     % python ./setup.py build
     % PYTHONPATH=build/lib.linux-i686-2.3 trial -v PROJECTNAME.test
     % python ./setup.py install

Unfortunately, the build/lib directory into which the built/copied .py files are placed is actually architecture-dependent, and I do not yet know of a simple way to calculate its value. For many projects it is sufficient to import their libraries “in place” from the tree's base directory (PYTHONPATH=.).

In addition, the PROJECTNAME value where the test files are located is project-dependent: it is usually just the project's top-level library directory, as common practice suggests the unit test files are put in the test sub-module. This value cannot be guessed, the Trial class must be told where to find the test files.

The Trial class provides support for building and testing projects which use distutils and trial. If the test module name is specified, trial will be invoked. The library path used for testing can also be set.

One advantage of trial is that the Buildbot happens to know how to parse trial output, letting it identify which tests passed and which ones failed. The Buildbot can then provide fine-grained reports about how many tests have failed, when individual tests fail when they had been passing previously, etc.

Another feature of trial is that you can give it a series of source .py files, and it will search them for special test-case-name tags that indicate which test cases provide coverage for that file. Trial can then run just the appropriate tests. This is useful for quick builds, where you want to only run the test cases that cover the changed functionality.

Arguments:

source
(required): A step specification tuple, like that used by GNUAutoconf.
buildpython
A list (argv array) of strings which specifies the python executable to use when building the package. Defaults to just ['python']. It may be useful to add flags here, to supress warnings during compilation of extension modules. This list is extended with ['./setup.py', 'build'] and then executed in a ShellCommand.
testpath
Provides a directory to add to PYTHONPATH when running the unit tests, if tests are being run. Defaults to . to include the project files in-place. The generated build library is frequently architecture-dependent, but may simply be build/lib for pure-python modules.
trialpython
Another list of strings used to build the command that actually runs trial. This is prepended to the contents of the trial argument below. It may be useful to add -W flags here to supress warnings that occur while tests are being run. Defaults to an empty list, meaning trial will be run without an explicit interpreter, which is generally what you want if you're using /usr/bin/trial instead of, say, the ./bin/trial that lives in the Twisted source tree.
trial
provides the name of the trial command. It is occasionally useful to use an alternate executable, such as trial2.2 which might run the tests under an older version of Python. Defaults to trial.
tests
Provides a module name or names which contain the unit tests for this project. Accepts a string, typically PROJECTNAME.test, or a list of strings. Defaults to None, indicating that no tests should be run. You must either set this or useTestCaseNames to do anyting useful with the Trial factory.
useTestCaseNames
Tells the Step to provide the names of all changed .py files to trial, so it can look for test-case-name tags and run just the matching test cases. Suitable for use in quick builds. Defaults to False.
randomly
If True, tells Trial (with the --random=0 argument) to run the test cases in random order, which sometimes catches subtle inter-test dependency bugs. Defaults to False.
recurse
If True, tells Trial (with the --recurse argument) to look in all subdirectories for additional test cases. It isn't clear to me how this works, but it may be useful to deal with the unknown-PROJECTNAME problem described above, and is currently used in the Twisted buildbot to accomodate the fact that test cases are now distributed through multiple twisted.SUBPROJECT.test directories.

Unless one of trialModule or useTestCaseNames are set, no tests will be run.

Some quick examples follow. Most of these examples assume that the target python code (the “code under test”) can be reached directly from the root of the target tree, rather than being in a lib/ subdirectory.

     #  Trial(source, tests="toplevel.test") does:
     #   python ./setup.py build
     #   PYTHONPATH=. trial -to toplevel.test
     
     #  Trial(source, tests=["toplevel.test", "other.test"]) does:
     #   python ./setup.py build
     #   PYTHONPATH=. trial -to toplevel.test other.test
     
     #  Trial(source, useTestCaseNames=True) does:
     #   python ./setup.py build
     #   PYTHONPATH=. trial -to --testmodule=foo/bar.py..  (from Changes)
     
     #  Trial(source, buildpython=["python2.3", "-Wall"], tests="foo.tests"):
     #   python2.3 -Wall ./setup.py build
     #   PYTHONPATH=. trial -to foo.tests
     
     #  Trial(source, trialpython="python2.3", trial="/usr/bin/trial",
     #        tests="foo.tests") does:
     #   python2.3 -Wall ./setup.py build
     #   PYTHONPATH=. python2.3 /usr/bin/trial -to foo.tests
     
     # For running trial out of the tree being tested (only useful when the
     # tree being built is Twisted itself):
     #  Trial(source, trialpython=["python2.3", "-Wall"], trial="./bin/trial",
     #        tests="foo.tests") does:
     #   python2.3 -Wall ./setup.py build
     #   PYTHONPATH=. python2.3 -Wall ./bin/trial -to foo.tests

If the output directory of ./setup.py build is known, you can pull the python code from the built location instead of the source directories. This should be able to handle variations in where the source comes from, as well as accomodating binary extension modules:

     # Trial(source,tests="toplevel.test",testpath='build/lib.linux-i686-2.3')
     # does:
     #  python ./setup.py build
     #  PYTHONPATH=build/lib.linux-i686-2.3 trial -to toplevel.test


Next: , Previous: Build Process, Up: Top

7 Status Delivery

More details are available in the docstrings for each class, use pydoc buildbot.status.html.Waterfall to see them. Most status delivery objects take a categories= argument, which can contain a list of “category” names: in this case, it will only show status for Builders that are in one of the named categories.

(implementor's note: each of these objects should be a service.MultiService which will be attached to the BuildMaster object when the configuration is processed. They should use self.parent.getStatus() to get access to the top-level IStatus object.)


Next: , Previous: Status Delivery, Up: Status Delivery

7.0.1 HTML Waterfall

     from buildbot.status import html
     w = html.Waterfall(http_port=8080)
     c['status'].append(w)

The buildbot.status.html.Waterfall status target creates an HTML “waterfall display”, which shows a time-based chart of events. This display provides detailed information about all steps of all recent builds, and provides hyperlinks to look at individual build logs and source changes. If the http_port argument is provided, it represents the TCP port number on which the web server should listen. If instead distrib_port is provided, a twisted.web distributed server will be started either on a TCP port (if distrib_port is an int) or more likely on a UNIX socket (if distrib_port is a string). The HTML page can have a favicon and custom CSS: see the docstring for details.

The distrib_port option means that, on a host with a suitably-configured twisted-web server, you do not need to consume a separate TCP port for the buildmaster's status web page. When the web server is constructed with mktap web --user, URLs that point to http://host/~username/ are dispatched to a sub-server that is listening on a UNIX socket at ~username/.twisted-web-pb. On such a system, it is convenient to create a dedicated buildbot user, then set distrib_port to os.path.expanduser("~/.twistd-web-pb"). This configuration will make the HTML status page available at http://host/~buildbot/. Suitable URL remapping can make it appear at http://host/buildbot/, and the right virtual host setup can even place it at http://buildbot.host/.


Next: , Previous: HTML Waterfall, Up: Status Delivery

7.0.2 IRC Bot

The buildbot.status.words.IRC status target creates an IRC bot which will attach to certain channels and be available for status queries. It can also be asked to announce builds as they occur, or be told to shut up.

     from twisted.status import words
     irc = words.IRC("irc.example.org", "botnickname",
                     channels=["channel1", "channel2"])
     c['status'].append(irc)

Take a look at the docstring for words.IRC for more details on configuring this service.

To use the service, you address messages at the buildbot, either normally (botnickname: status) or with private messages (/msg botnickname status). The buildbot will respond in kind.

Some of the commands currently available:

list builders
Emit a list of all configured builders
status BUILDER
Announce the status of a specific Builder: what it is doing right now.
status all
Announce the status of all Builders
watch BUILDER
If the given Builder is currently running, wait until the Build is finished and then announce the results.
last BUILDER
Return the results of the last build to run on the given Builder.
help COMMAND
Describe a command. Use help commands to get a list of known commands.
source
Announce the URL of the Buildbot's home page.
version
Announce the version of this Buildbot.

If the allowForce=True option was used, some addtional commands will be available:

force build BUILDER REASON
Tell the given Builder to start a build of the latest code. The user requesting the build and REASON are recorded in the Build status. The buildbot will announce the build's status when it finishes.
stop build BUILDER REASON
Terminate any running build in the given Builder. REASON will be added to the build status to explain why it was stopped. You might use this if you committed a bug, corrected it right away, and don't want to wait for the first build (which is destined to fail) to complete before starting the second (hopefully fixed) build.


Previous: IRC Bot, Up: Status Delivery

7.0.3 PBListener

buildbot.status.client.PBListener(port=int, user=str, passwd=str)

This sets up a PB listener on the given TCP port, to which a PB-based status client can connect and retrieve status information. buildbot statusgui is an example of such a status client.


Next: , Previous: Status Delivery, Up: Top

8 Resources

The Buildbot's home page is at http://buildbot.sourceforge.net/

For configuration questions and general discussion, please use the buildbot-devel mailing list. The subscription instructions and archives are available at http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/buildbot-devel


Previous: Resources, Up: Top

Index


Footnotes

[1] except Darcs, but since the Buildbot never changes its local source tree we can ignore the fact that Darcs uses a less centralized model

[2] many VC systems provide more complexity than this: in particular the local views that P4 and ClearCase can assemble out of various source directories are more complex than we're prepared to take advantage of here

[3] although this checkoutDelay can be overridden

[4] To be precise, it is a list of objects which all implement the buildbot.interfaces.IChangeSource Interface