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. If you are using a separate user
account, this might just be ~buildmaster/masters/fooproject.
Once you've picked a directory, use the buildbot create-master command to create the directory and populate it with startup files:
buildbot create-master -r 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 customized daemon startup, See Launching the daemons.