This is the BuildBot documentation for Buildbot version 0.8.8.

If you are evaluating Buildbot and would like to get started quickly, start with the Tutorial. Regular users of Buildbot should consult the Manual, and those wishing to modify Buildbot directly will want to be familiar with the Developer's Documentation.

Table Of Contents¶

Buildbot Tutorial¶

Contents:

First Run¶

Goal¶

This tutorial will take you from zero to running your first buildbot master and slave as quickly as possible, without changing the default configuration.

This tutorial is all about instant gratification and the five minute experience: in five minutes we want to convince you that this project Works, and that you should seriously consider spending some more time learning the system. In this tutorial no configuration or code changes are done.

This tutorial assumes that you are running on Unix, but might be adaptable easily to Windows.

For the quickest way through, you should be able to cut and paste each shell block from this tutorial directly into a terminal.

Getting the code¶

There are many ways to get the code on your machine. For this tutorial, we will use easy_install to install and run buildbot. While this isn't the preferred method to install buildbot, it is the simplest one to use for the purposes of this tutorial because it should work on all systems. (The preferred method would be to install buildbot from packages of your distribution.)

To make this work, you will need the following installed:

Python and the development packages for it
virtualenv
Git

Preferably, use your package installer to install these.

You will also need a working Internet connection, as virtualenv and easy_install will need to download other projects from the Internet.

Note

Buildbot does not require root access. Run the commands in this tutorial as a normal, unprivileged user.

Let's dive in by typing at the terminal:

cd
mkdir -p tmp/buildbot
cd tmp/buildbot
virtualenv --no-site-packages sandbox
source sandbox/bin/activate
easy_install sqlalchemy==0.7.10
easy_install buildbot

Note

The requirement to install SQLAlchemy-0.7.10 is due to a conflict between newer versions of SQLAlchemy and SQLAlchemy-Migrate.

Creating a master¶

At the terminal, type:

buildbot create-master master
mv master/master.cfg.sample master/master.cfg

Now start it:

buildbot start master
tail -f master/twistd.log

You will now see all of the log information from the master in this terminal. You should see lines like this:

2011-12-04 10:04:40-0600 [-] Starting factory <buildbot.status.web.baseweb.RotateLogSite instance at 0x2e36638>
2011-12-04 10:04:40-0600 [-] Setting up http.log rotating 10 files of 10000000 bytes each
2011-12-04 10:04:40-0600 [-] WebStatus using (/home/dustin/tmp/buildbot/master/public_html)
2011-12-04 10:04:40-0600 [-] removing 0 old schedulers, updating 0, and adding 1
2011-12-04 10:04:40-0600 [-] adding 1 new changesources, removing 0
2011-12-04 10:04:40-0600 [-] gitpoller: using workdir '/home/dustin/tmp/buildbot/master/gitpoller-workdir'
2011-12-04 10:04:40-0600 [-] gitpoller: initializing working dir from git://github.com/buildbot/pyflakes.git
2011-12-04 10:04:40-0600 [-] configuration update complete
2011-12-04 10:04:41-0600 [-] gitpoller: checking out master
2011-12-04 10:04:41-0600 [-] gitpoller: finished initializing working dir from git://github.com/buildbot/pyflakes.git at rev 1a4af6ec1dbb724b884ea14f439b272f30439e4d

Creating a slave¶

Open a new terminal, and first enter the same sandbox you created before:

cd
cd tmp/buildbot
source sandbox/bin/activate

Install buildslave command:

easy_install buildbot-slave

Now, create the slave:

buildslave create-slave slave localhost:9989 example-slave pass

The user:host pair, username, and password should be the same as the ones in master.cfg; verify this is the case by looking at the section for c['slaves'] and c['slavePortnum']:

cat master/master.cfg

Now, start the slave:

buildslave start slave

Check the slave's log:

tail -f slave/twistd.log

You should see lines like the following at the end of the worker log:

2009-07-29 20:59:18+0200 [Broker,client] message from master: attached
2009-07-29 20:59:18+0200 [Broker,client] SlaveBuilder.remote_print(buildbot-full): message from master: attached
2009-07-29 20:59:18+0200 [Broker,client] sending application-level keepalives every 600 seconds

Meanwhile, in the other terminal, in the master log, if you tail the log you should see lines like this:

2011-03-13 18:46:58-0700 [Broker,1,127.0.0.1] slave 'example-slave' attaching from IPv4Address(TCP, '127.0.0.1', 41306)
2011-03-13 18:46:58-0700 [Broker,1,127.0.0.1] Got slaveinfo from 'example-slave'
2011-03-13 18:46:58-0700 [Broker,1,127.0.0.1] bot attached
2011-03-13 18:46:58-0700 [Broker,1,127.0.0.1] Buildslave example-slave attached to runtests

You should now be able to go to http://localhost:8010, where you will see a web page similar to:

Click on the Waterfall Display link and you get this:

That's the end of the first tutorial. A bit underwhelming, you say? Well, that was the point! We just wanted to get you to dip your toes in the water. It's easy to take your first steps, but this is about as far as we can go without touching the configuration.

You've got a taste now, but you're probably curious for more. Let's step it up a little in the second tutorial by changing the configuration and doing an actual build. Continue on to A Quick Tour

A Quick Tour¶

Goal¶

This tutorial will expand on the First Run tutorial by taking a quick tour around some of the features of buildbot that are hinted at in the comments in the sample configuration. We will simply change parts of the default configuration and explain the activated features.

As a part of this tutorial, we will make buildbot do a few actual builds.

This section will teach you how to:

make simple configuration changes and activate them
deal with configuration errors
force builds
enable and control the IRC bot
enable ssh debugging
add a 'try' scheduler

Setting Project Name and URL¶

Let's start simple by looking at where you would customize the buildbot's project name and URL.

We continue where we left off in the First Run tutorial.

Open a new terminal, and first enter the same sandbox you created before (where $EDITOR is your editor of choice like vim, gedit, or emacs):

cd
cd tmp/buildbot
source sandbox/bin/activate
$EDITOR master/master.cfg

Now, look for the section marked PROJECT IDENTITY which reads:

####### PROJECT IDENTITY

# the 'title' string will appear at the top of this buildbot
# installation's html.WebStatus home page (linked to the
# 'titleURL') and is embedded in the title of the waterfall HTML page.

c['title'] = "Pyflakes"
c['titleURL'] = "http://divmod.org/trac/wiki/DivmodPyflakes"

If you want, you can change either of these links to anything you want to see what happens when you change them.

After making a change go into the terminal and type:

buildbot reconfig master

You will see a handful of lines of output from the master log, much like this:

2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] loading configuration from /home/dustin/tmp/buildbot/master/master.cfg
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] configuration update started
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] builder runtests is unchanged
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] removing IStatusReceiver <WebStatus on port tcp:8010 at 0x2aee368>
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] (TCP Port 8010 Closed)
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] Stopping factory <buildbot.status.web.baseweb.RotateLogSite instance at 0x2e36638>
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] adding IStatusReceiver <WebStatus on port tcp:8010 at 0x2c2d950>
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] RotateLogSite starting on 8010
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] Starting factory <buildbot.status.web.baseweb.RotateLogSite instance at 0x2e36e18>
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] Setting up http.log rotating 10 files of 10000000 bytes each
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] WebStatus using (/home/dustin/tmp/buildbot/master/public_html)
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] removing 0 old schedulers, updating 0, and adding 0
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] adding 1 new changesources, removing 1
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] gitpoller: using workdir '/home/dustin/tmp/buildbot/master/gitpoller-workdir'
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] GitPoller repository already exists
2011-12-04 10:11:09-0600 [-] configuration update complete

Reconfiguration appears to have completed successfully.

The important lines are the ones telling you that it is loading the new configuration at the top, and the one at the bottom saying that the update is complete.

Now, if you go back to the waterfall page, you will see that the project's name is whatever you may have changed it to and when you click on the URL of the project name at the bottom of the page it should take you to the link you put in the configuration.

Configuration Errors¶

It is very common to make a mistake when configuring buildbot, so you might as well see now what happens in that case and what you can do to fix the error.

Open up the config again and introduce a syntax error by removing the first single quote in the two lines you changed, so they read:

c[title'] = "Pyflakes"
c['titleURL'] = "http://divmod.org/trac/wiki/DivmodPyflakes"

This creates a Python SyntaxError. Now go ahead and reconfig the buildmaster:

buildbot reconfig master

This time, the output looks like:

2011-12-04 10:12:28-0600 [-] loading configuration from /home/dustin/tmp/buildbot/master/master.cfg
2011-12-04 10:12:28-0600 [-] configuration update started
2011-12-04 10:12:28-0600 [-] error while parsing config file
2011-12-04 10:12:28-0600 [-] Unhandled Error
        Traceback (most recent call last):
        File "/home/dustin/tmp/buildbot/sandbox/lib/python2.7/site-packages/buildbot-0.8.5-py2.7.egg/buildbot/master.py", line 197, in loadTheConfigFile
            d = self.loadConfig(f)
        File "/home/dustin/tmp/buildbot/sandbox/lib/python2.7/site-packages/buildbot-0.8.5-py2.7.egg/buildbot/master.py", line 579, in loadConfig
            d.addCallback(do_load)
        File "/home/dustin/tmp/buildbot/sandbox/lib/python2.7/site-packages/Twisted-11.1.0-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg/twisted/internet/defer.py", line 298, in addCallback
            callbackKeywords=kw)
        File "/home/dustin/tmp/buildbot/sandbox/lib/python2.7/site-packages/Twisted-11.1.0-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg/twisted/internet/defer.py", line 287, in addCallbacks
            self._runCallbacks()
        --- <exception caught here> ---
        File "/home/dustin/tmp/buildbot/sandbox/lib/python2.7/site-packages/Twisted-11.1.0-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg/twisted/internet/defer.py", line 545, in _runCallbacks
            current.result = callback(current.result, *args, **kw)
        File "/home/dustin/tmp/buildbot/sandbox/lib/python2.7/site-packages/buildbot-0.8.5-py2.7.egg/buildbot/master.py", line 226, in do_load
            exec f in localDict
        exceptions.SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal (master.cfg, line 17)

Never saw reconfiguration finish.

This time, it's clear that there was a mistake. in the configuration. Luckily, the buildbot master will ignore the wrong configuration and keep running with the previous configuration.

The message is clear enough, so open the configuration again, fix the error, and reconfig the master.

Your First Build¶

By now you're probably thinking: "All this time spent and still not done a single build ? What was the name of this project again ?"

On the waterfall. page, click on the runtests link. You'll see a builder page, and in the upper-right corner is a box where you can login. The default username and password are both "pyflakes". Once you've logged in, you will see some new options that allow you to force a build:

Click Force Build - there's no need to fill in any of the fields in this case. Next, click on view in waterfall.

You will now see:

Enabling the IRC Bot¶

Buildbot includes an IRC bot that you can tell to join a channel and control to report on the status of buildbot.

First, start an IRC client of your choice, connect to irc.freenode.org and join an empty channel. In this example we will use #buildbot-test, so go join that channel. (Note: please do not join the main buildbot channel!)

Edit the config and look for the STATUS TARGETS section. Enter these lines below the WebStatus line in master.cfg:

c['status'].append(html.WebStatus(http_port=8010, authz=authz_cfg))

from buildbot.status import words
c['status'].append(words.IRC(host="irc.freenode.org", nick="bbtest",
                             channels=["#buildbot-test"]))

Reconfigure the build master then do:

cat master/twistd.log | grep IRC

The log output should contain a line like this:

2009-08-01 15:35:20+0200 [-] adding IStatusReceiver <buildbot.status.words.IRC instance at 0x300d290>

You should see the bot now joining in your IRC client. In your IRC channel, type:

bbtest: commands

to get a list of the commands the bot supports.

Let's tell the bot to notify certain events, to learn which EVENTS we can notify on:

bbtest: help notify

Now let's set some event notifications:

bbtest: notify on started
bbtest: notify on finished
bbtest: notify on failure

The bot should have responded to each of the commands:

<@lsblakk> bbtest: notify on started
<bbtest> The following events are being notified: ['started']
<@lsblakk> bbtest: notify on finished
<bbtest> The following events are being notified: ['started', 'finished']
<@lsblakk> bbtest: notify on failure
<bbtest> The following events are being notified: ['started', 'failure', 'finished']

Now, go back to the web interface and force another build.

Notice how the bot tells you about the start and finish of this build:

< bbtest> build #1 of runtests started, including []
< bbtest> build #1 of runtests is complete: Success [build successful]  Build details are at http://localhost:8010/builders/runtests/builds/1

You can also use the bot to force a build:

bbtest: force build runtests test build

But to allow this, you'll need to have allowForce in the IRC configuration:

c['status'].append(words.IRC(host="irc.freenode.org", nick="bbtest",
                             allowForce=True,
                             channels=["#buildbot-test"]))

This time, the bot is giving you more output, as it's specifically responding to your direct request to force a build, and explicitly tells you when the build finishes:

<@lsblakk> bbtest: force build runtests test build
< bbtest> build #2 of runtests started, including []
< bbtest> build forced [ETA 0 seconds]
< bbtest> I'll give a shout when the build finishes
< bbtest> build #2 of runtests is complete: Success [build successful]  Build details are at http://localhost:8010/builders/runtests/builds/2

You can also see the new builds in the web interface.

a successful test run from IRC happened.

Setting Authorized Web Users¶

Further down, look for the WebStatus configuration:

c['status'] = []

from buildbot.status import html
from buildbot.status.web import authz, auth

authz_cfg=authz.Authz(
    # change any of these to True to enable; see the manual for more
    # options
    auth=auth.BasicAuth([("pyflakes","pyflakes")]),
    gracefulShutdown = False,
    forceBuild = 'auth', # use this to test your slave once it is set up
    forceAllBuilds = False,
    pingBuilder = False,
    stopBuild = False,
    stopAllBuilds = False,
    cancelPendingBuild = False,
)
c['status'].append(html.WebStatus(http_port=8010, authz=authz_cfg))

The auth.BasicAuth() define authorized users and their passwords. You can change these or add new ones. See WebStatus for more about the WebStatus configuration.

Debugging with Manhole¶

You can do some debugging by using manhole, an interactive Python shell. It exposes full access to the buildmaster's account (including the ability to modify and delete files), so it should not be enabled with a weak or easily guessable password.

To use this you will need to install an additional package or two to your virtualenv:

cd
cd tmp/buildbot
source sandbox/bin/activate
easy_install pycrypto
easy_install pyasn1

In your master.cfg find:

c = BuildmasterConfig = {}

Insert the following to enable debugging mode with manhole:

####### DEBUGGING
from buildbot import manhole
c['manhole'] = manhole.PasswordManhole("tcp:1234:interface=127.0.0.1","admin","passwd")

After restarting the master, you can ssh into the master and get an interactive Python shell:

ssh -p1234 admin@127.0.0.1
# enter passwd at prompt

Note

The pyasn1-0.1.1 release has a bug which results in an exception similar to this on startup:

exceptions.TypeError: argument 2 must be long, not int

If you see this, the temporary solution is to install the previous version of pyasn1:

pip install pyasn1-0.0.13b

If you wanted to check which slaves are connected and what builders those slaves are assigned to you could do:

>>> master.botmaster.slaves
{'example-slave': <BuildSlave 'example-slave', current builders: runtests>}

Objects can be explored in more depth using dir(x) or the helper function show(x).

Adding a 'try' scheduler¶

Buildbot includes a way for developers to submit patches for testing without committing them to the source code control system. (This is really handy for projects that support several operating systems or architectures.)

To set this up, add the following lines to master.cfg:

from buildbot.scheduler import Try_Userpass
c['schedulers'].append(Try_Userpass(
                                    name='try',
                                    builderNames=['runtests'],
                                    port=5555,
                                    userpass=[('sampleuser','samplepass')]))

Then you can submit changes using the try command.

Let's try this out by making a one-line change to pyflakes, say, to make it trace the tree by default:

git clone git://github.com/buildbot/pyflakes.git pyflakes-git
cd pyflakes-git/pyflakes
$EDITOR checker.py
# change "traceTree = False" on line 185 to "traceTree = True"

Then run buildbot's try command as follows:

source ~/tmp/buildbot/sandbox/bin/activate
buildbot try --connect=pb --master=127.0.0.1:5555 --username=sampleuser --passwd=samplepass --vc=git

This will do "git diff" for you and send the resulting patch to the server for build and test against the latest sources from Git.

Now go back to the waterfall page, click on the runtests link, and scroll down. You should see that another build has been started with your change (and stdout for the tests should be chock-full of parse trees as a result). The "Reason" for the job will be listed as "'try' job", and the blamelist will be empty.

To make yourself show up as the author of the change, use the --who=emailaddr option on 'buildbot try' to pass your email address.

To make a description of the change show up, use the --properties=comment="this is a comment" option on 'buildbot try'.

To use ssh instead of a private username/password database, see Try_Jobdir.

Buildbot Manual¶

Introduction¶

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:

run builds on a variety of slave platforms
arbitrary build process: handles projects using C, Python, whatever
minimal host requirements: Python and Twisted
slaves can be behind a firewall if they can still do checkout
status delivery through web page, email, IRC, other protocols
track builds in progress, provide estimated completion time
flexible configuration by subclassing generic build process classes
debug tools to force a new build, submit fake Changes, query slave status
released under the GPL

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 developers 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. Unit tests that aren't run on a regular basis tend to suffer from bitrot just like code does: exercising them on a regular basis helps to keep them functioning and useful.

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.

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, when, and how 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 (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.

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 favorite platform.

BuildSlave Connections¶

The buildslaves are typically run on a variety of separate machines, at least one per platform of interest. These machines connect to the buildmaster over a TCP connection to a publically-visible port. As a result, the buildslaves can live behind a NAT box or similar firewalls, as long as they can get to buildmaster. The TCP connections are initiated by the buildslave and accepted by the buildmaster, but commands and results travel both ways within this connection. The buildmaster is always in charge, so all commands travel exclusively from the buildmaster to the buildslave.

To perform builds, the buildslaves must typically obtain source code from a CVS/SVN/etc repository. Therefore they must also be able to reach the repository. The buildmaster provides instructions for performing builds, but does not provide the source code itself.

Buildmaster Architecture¶

The buildmaster consists of several pieces:

Change Sources: Which create a Change object each time something is modified in the VC repository. Most ChangeSources listen for messages from a hook script of some sort. Some sources actively poll the repository on a regular basis. All Changes are fed to the Schedulers.
Schedulers: Which decide when builds should be performed. They collect Changes into BuildRequests, which are then queued for delivery to Builders until a buildslave is available.
Builders: Which control exactly how each build is performed (with a series of BuildSteps, configured in a BuildFactory). Each Build is run on a single buildslave.
Status plugins: Which deliver information about the build results through protocols like HTTP, mail, and IRC.

Each Builder is configured with a list of BuildSlaves that it will use for its builds. These buildslaves are expected to behave identically: the only reason to use multiple BuildSlaves for a single Builder is to provide a measure of load-balancing.

Within a single BuildSlave, each Builder creates its own SlaveBuilder instance. These SlaveBuilders operate independently from each other. Each gets its own base directory to work in. It is quite common to have many Builders sharing the same buildslave. For example, there might be two buildslaves: one for i386, and a second for PowerPC. There may then be a pair of Builders that do a full compile/test run, one for each architecture, and a lone Builder that creates snapshot source tarballs if the full builders complete successfully. The full builders would each run on a single buildslave, whereas the tarball creation step might run on either buildslave (since the platform doesn't matter when creating source tarballs). In this case, the mapping would look like:

Builder(full-i386)  ->  BuildSlaves(slave-i386)
Builder(full-ppc)   ->  BuildSlaves(slave-ppc)
Builder(source-tarball) -> BuildSlaves(slave-i386, slave-ppc)

and each BuildSlave would have two SlaveBuilders inside it, one for a full builder, and a second for the source-tarball builder.

Once a SlaveBuilder is available, the Builder pulls one or more BuildRequests off its incoming queue. (It may pull more than one if it determines that it can merge the requests together; for example, there may be multiple requests to build the current HEAD revision). These requests are merged into a single Build instance, which includes the SourceStamp that describes what exact version of the source code should be used for the build. The Build is then randomly assigned to a free SlaveBuilder and the build begins.

The behaviour when BuildRequests are merged can be customized, Merging Build Requests.

Status Delivery Architecture¶

The buildmaster maintains a central Status object, to which various status plugins are connected. Through this Status object, a full hierarchy of build status objects can be obtained.

The configuration file controls which status plugins are active. Each status plugin gets a reference to the top-level Status object. From there they can request information on each Builder, Build, Step, and LogFile. This query-on-demand interface is used by the html.Waterfall plugin to create the main status page each time a web browser hits the main URL.

The status plugins can also subscribe to hear about new Builds as they occur: this is used by the MailNotifier to create new email messages for each recently-completed Build.

The Status object records the status of old builds on disk in the buildmaster's base directory. This allows it to return information about historical builds.

There are also status objects that correspond to Schedulers and BuildSlaves. These allow status plugins to report information about upcoming builds, and the online/offline status of each buildslave.

Control Flow¶

A day in the life of the buildbot:

A developer commits some source code changes to the repository. A hook script or commit trigger of some sort sends information about this change to the buildmaster through one of its configured Change Sources. This notification might arrive via email, or over a network connection (either initiated by the buildmaster as it subscribes to changes, or by the commit trigger as it pushes Changes towards the buildmaster). The Change contains information about who made the change, what files were modified, which revision contains the change, and any checkin comments.
The buildmaster distributes this change to all of its configured Schedulers. Any important changes cause the tree-stable-timer to be started, and the Change is added to a list of those that will go into a new Build. When the timer expires, a Build is started on each of a set of configured Builders, all compiling/testing the same source code. Unless configured otherwise, all Builds run in parallel on the various buildslaves.
The Build consists of a series of Steps. Each Step causes some number of commands to be invoked on the remote buildslave associated with that Builder. The first step is almost always to perform a checkout of the appropriate revision from the same VC system that produced the Change. The rest generally perform a compile and run unit tests. As each Step runs, the buildslave reports back command output and return status to the buildmaster.
As the Build runs, status messages like "Build Started", "Step Started", "Build Finished", etc, are published to a collection of Status Targets. One of these targets is usually the HTML Waterfall display, which shows a chronological list of events, and summarizes the results of the most recent build at the top of each column. Developers can periodically check this page to see how their changes have fared. If they see red, they know that they've made a mistake and need to fix it. If they see green, they know that they've done their duty and don't need to worry about their change breaking anything.
If a MailNotifier status target is active, the completion of a build will cause email to be sent to any developers whose Changes were incorporated into this Build. The MailNotifier can be configured to only send mail upon failing builds, or for builds which have just transitioned from passing to failing. Other status targets can provide similar real-time notification via different communication channels, like IRC.

Installation¶

Buildbot Components¶

Buildbot is shipped in two components: the buildmaster (called buildbot for legacy reasons) and the buildslave. The buildslave component has far fewer requirements, and is more broadly compatible than the buildmaster. You will need to carefully pick the environment in which to run your buildmaster, but the buildslave should be able to run just about anywhere.

It is possible to install the buildmaster and buildslave on the same system, although for anything but the smallest installation this arrangement will not be very efficient.

Requirements¶

Common Requirements¶

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

Python: http://www.python.org

Buildbot requires Python-2.5 or later on the master, although Python-2.7 is recommended. The slave run on Python-2.4.

Twisted: http://twistedmatrix.com

Buildbot requires Twisted-9.0.0 or later on the master, and Twisted-8.1.0 on the slave. As always, the most recent version is recommended.

In some cases, Twisted is delivered as a collection of subpackages. You'll need at least "Twisted" (the core package), and you'll also want TwistedMail, TwistedWeb, and TwistedWords (for sending email, serving a web status page, and delivering build status via IRC, respectively). You might also want TwistedConch (for the encrypted Manhole debug port). Note that Twisted requires ZopeInterface to be installed as well.

Of course, your project's build process will impose additional requirements on the buildslaves. These hosts must have all the tools necessary to compile and test your project's source code.

Windows Support¶

Buildbot - both master and slave - runs well natively on Windows. The slave runs well on Cygwin, but because of problems with SQLite on Cygwin, the master does not.

Buildbot's windows testing is limited to the most recent Twisted and Python versions. For best results, use the most recent available versions of these libraries on Windows.

Pywin32: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/

Twisted requires PyWin32 in order to spawn processes on Windows.

Buildmaster Requirements¶

sqlite3: http://www.sqlite.org

Buildbot requires SQLite to store its state. Version 3.7.0 or higher is recommended, although Buildbot will run against earlier versions -- at the risk of "Database is locked" errors. The minimum version is 3.4.0, below which parallel database queries and schema introspection fail.

pysqlite: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pysqlite

The SQLite Python package is required for Python-2.5 and earlier (it is already included in Python-2.5 and later, but the version in Python-2.5 has nasty bugs)

simplejson: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/simplejson

The simplejson package is required for Python-2.5 and earlier (it is already included as json in Python-2.6 and later)

Jinja2: http://jinja.pocoo.org/

Buildbot requires Jinja version 2.1 or higher.

Jinja2 is a general purpose templating language and is used by Buildbot to generate the HTML output.

SQLAlchemy: http://www.sqlalchemy.org/

Buildbot requires SQLAlchemy 0.6.0 or higher. SQLAlchemy allows Buildbot to build database schemas and queries for a wide variety of database systems.

SQLAlchemy-Migrate: http://code.google.com/p/sqlalchemy-migrate/

Buildbot requires one of the following SQLAlchemy-Migrate versions: 0.6.1, 0.7.0, and 0.7.1. Sadly, Migrate's inter-version compatibility is not good, so other versions - newer or older - are unlikely to work correctly. Buildbot uses SQLAlchemy-Migrate to manage schema upgrades from version to version.

Python-Dateutil: http://labix.org/python-dateutil

The Nightly scheduler requires Python-Dateutil version 1.5 (the last version to support Python-2.x). This is a small, pure-python library. Buildbot will function properly without it if the Nightlys scheduler is not used.

Installing the code¶

The Distribution Package¶

Buildbot comes in two parts: buildbot (the master) and buildbot-slave (the slave). The two can be installed individually or together.

Installation From PyPI¶

The easiest way to install Buildbot is using 'pip'. For the master:

pip install buildbot

and for the slave:

pip install buildbot-slave

Installation From Tarballs¶

Buildbot and Buildslave are installed using the standard Python distutils process. For either component, 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/pythonx.y/site-packages/buildbot. It will also install the buildbot command-line tool in /usr/bin/buildbot.

If the environment variable $NO_INSTALL_REQS is set to 1, then setup.py will not try to install Buildbot's requirements. This is usually only useful when building a Buildbot package.

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

buildbot --version
# or
buildslave --version

If it shows you the versions of Buildbot and Twisted, the install went ok. If it says "no such command" or it gets an ImportError when it tries to load the libraries, then something went wrong. pydoc buildbot is another useful diagnostic tool.

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.

Installation in a Virtualenv¶

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 or any other location using a tool like virtualenv.

Running Buildbot's Tests (optional)¶

If you wish, you can run the buildbot unit test suite. First, ensure you have the mock Python module installed from PyPi. This module is not required for ordinary Buildbot operation - only to run the tests. Note that this is not the same as the Fedora mock package! You can check with

python -mmock

Then, run the tests:

PYTHONPATH=. trial buildbot.test
# or
PYTHONPATH=. trial buildslave.test

Nothing should fail, although a few might be skipped.

If any of the tests fail for reasons other than a missing mock, you should stop and investigate the cause before continuing the installation process, as it will probably be easier to track down the bug early. In most cases, the problem is incorrectly installed Python modules or a badly configured PYTHONPATH. This may be a good time to contact the Buildbot developers for help.

Creating a buildmaster¶

As you learned earlier (System Architecture), the buildmaster runs on a central host (usually one that is publicly visible, so everybody can check on the status of the project), and controls all aspects of the buildbot system

You will probably wish to create a separate user account for the buildmaster, perhaps named buildmaster. Do not run the buildmaster as root!

You need to choose a directory for the buildmaster, called the basedir. This directory will be owned by the buildmaster. It will contain configuration, the database, and status information - including logfiles. On a large buildmaster this directory will see a lot of activity, so it should be on a disk with adequate space and speed.

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 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.)

Using A Database Server¶

If you want to use a database server (e.g., MySQL or Postgres) as the database backend for your Buildbot, add the --db option to the create-master invocation to specify the connection string for the database, and make sure that the same URL appears in the db_url of the db parameter in your configuration file.

Additional Requirements¶

Depending on the selected database, further Python packages will be required. Consult the SQLAlchemy dialect list for a full description. The most common choice for MySQL is

MySQL-python: http://mysql-python.sourceforge.net/

To communicate with MySQL, SQLAlchemy requires MySQL-python. Any reasonably recent version of MySQL-python should suffice.

The most common choice for Postgres is

Psycopg: http://initd.org/psycopg/

SQLAlchemy uses Psycopg to communicate with Postgres. Any reasonably recent version should suffice.

Buildmaster Options¶

This section lists options to the create-master command. You can also type buildbot create-master --help for an up-to-the-moment summary.

--force

With this option, @command{create-master} will re-use an existing master directory.

--no-logrotate

This disables internal buildslave log management mechanism. With this option buildslave does not override the default logfile name and its behaviour giving a possibility to control those with command-line options of twistd daemon.

--relocatable

This creates a "relocatable" buildbot.tac, which uses relative paths instead of absolute paths, so that the buildmaster directory can be moved about.

--config

The name of the configuration file to use. This configuration file need not reside in the buildmaster directory.

--log-size

This is the size in bytes when to rotate the Twisted log files. The default is 10MiB.

--log-count

This is the number of log rotations to keep around. You can either specify a number or @code{None} to keep all @file{twistd.log} files around. The default is 10.

--db

The database that the Buildmaster should use. Note that the same value must be added to the configuration file.

Upgrading an Existing Buildmaster¶

If you have just installed a new version of the Buildbot code, and you have buildmasters that were created using an older version, you'll need to upgrade these buildmasters before you can use them. The upgrade process adds and modifies files in the buildmaster's base directory to make it compatible with the new code.

buildbot upgrade-master basedir

This command will also scan your master.cfg file for incompatibilities (by loading it and printing any errors or deprecation warnings that occur). Each buildbot release tries to be compatible with configurations that worked cleanly (i.e. without deprecation warnings) on the previous release: any functions or classes that are to be removed will first be deprecated in a release, to give you a chance to start using the replacement.

The upgrade-master command is idempotent. It is safe to run it multiple times. After each upgrade of the buildbot code, you should use upgrade-master on all your buildmasters.

In general, Buildbot slaves and masters can be upgraded independently, although some new features will not be available, depending on the master and slave versions.

Beyond this general information, read all of the sections below that apply to versions through which you are upgrading.

Version-specific Notes¶

Upgrading a Buildmaster to Buildbot-0.7.6¶

The 0.7.6 release introduced the public_html/ directory, which contains index.html and other files served by the WebStatus and Waterfall status displays. The upgrade-master command will create these files if they do not already exist. It will not modify existing copies, but it will write a new copy in e.g. index.html.new if the new version differs from the version that already exists.

Upgrading a Buildmaster to Buildbot-0.8.0¶

Buildbot-0.8.0 introduces a database backend, which is SQLite by default. The upgrade-master command will automatically create and populate this database with the changes the buildmaster has seen. Note that, as of this release, build history is not contained in the database, and is thus not migrated.

The upgrade process renames the Changes pickle ($basedir/changes.pck) to changes.pck.old once the upgrade is complete. To reverse the upgrade, simply downgrade Buildbot and move this file back to its original name. You may also wish to delete the state database (state.sqlite).

Upgrading into a non-SQLite database¶

If you are not using sqlite, you will need to add an entry into your master.cfg to reflect the database version you are using. The upgrade process does not edit your master.cfg for you. So something like:

# for using mysql:
c['db_url'] = 'mysql://bbuser:<password>@localhost/buildbot'

Once the parameter has been added, invoke upgrade-master. This will extract the DB url from your configuration file.

buildbot upgrade-master

See Database Specification for more options to specify a database.

Change Encoding Issues¶

The upgrade process assumes that strings in your Changes pickle are encoded in UTF-8 (or plain ASCII). If this is not the case, and if there are non-UTF-8 characters in the pickle, the upgrade will fail with a suitable error message. If this occurs, you have two options. If the change history is not important to your purpose, you can simply delete changes.pck.

If you would like to keep the change history, then you will need to figure out which encoding is in use, and use contrib/fix_changes_pickle_encoding.py (Contrib Scripts) to rewrite the changes pickle into Unicode before upgrading the master. A typical invocation (with Mac-Roman encoding) might look like:

$ python $buildbot/contrib/fix_changes_pickle_encoding.py changes.pck macroman
decoding bytestrings in changes.pck using macroman
converted 11392 strings
backing up changes.pck to changes.pck.old

If your Changes pickle uses multiple encodings, you're on your own, but the script in contrib may provide a good starting point for the fix.

Upgrading a Buildmaster to Later Versions¶

Up to Buildbot version 0.8.8, no further steps beyond those described above are required.

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:

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.

Install the buildbot code

Follow the instructions given earlier (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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

your buildslave's name

the password assigned to your buildslave

the hostname and port number of the buildmaster, i.e. buildbot.example.org:8007

Create the buildslave

Now run the 'buildslave' command as follows:

buildslave create-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.

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.

The optional BASEDIR/info/access_uri can specify a URI which will connect a user to the machine. Many systems accept ssh://hostname URIs for this purpose.

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

Buildslave Options¶

There are a handful of options you might want to use when creating the buildslave with the buildslave create-slave <options> DIR <params> command. You can type buildslave create-slave --help for a summary. To use these, just include them on the buildslave create-slave command line, like this

buildslave create-slave --umask=022 ~/buildslave buildmaster.example.org:42012 {myslavename} {mypasswd}

--no-logrotate¶: This disables internal buildslave log management mechanism. With this option buildslave does not override the default logfile name and its behaviour giving a possibility to control those with command-line options of twistd daemon.

--usepty¶: This is a boolean flag that tells the buildslave whether to launch child processes in a PTY or with regular pipes (the default) when the master does not specify. This option is deprecated, as this particular parameter is better specified on the master.

--umask¶: This is a string (generally an octal representation of an integer) which will cause the buildslave process' umask value to be set shortly after initialization. The twistd daemonization utility forces the umask to 077 at startup (which means that all files created by the buildslave or its child processes will be unreadable by any user other than the buildslave account). If you want build products to be readable by other accounts, you can add --umask=022 to tell the buildslave to fix the umask after twistd clobbers it. If you want build products to be writable by other accounts too, use --umask=000, but this is likely to be a security problem.

--keepalive¶

This is a number that indicates how frequently keepalive messages should be sent from the buildslave to the buildmaster, expressed in seconds. The default (600) causes a message to be sent to the buildmaster at least once every 10 minutes. To set this to a lower value, use e.g. --keepalive=120.

If the buildslave is behind a NAT box or stateful firewall, these messages may help to keep the connection alive: some NAT boxes tend to forget about a connection if it has not been used in a while. When this happens, the buildmaster will think that the buildslave has disappeared, and builds will time out. Meanwhile the buildslave will not realize than anything is wrong.

--maxdelay¶: This is a number that indicates the maximum amount of time the buildslave will wait between connection attempts, expressed in seconds. The default (300) causes the buildslave to wait at most 5 minutes before trying to connect to the buildmaster again.

--log-size¶: This is the size in bytes when to rotate the Twisted log files.

--log-count¶: This is the number of log rotations to keep around. You can either specify a number or None to keep all twistd.log files around. The default is 10.

--allow-shutdown¶

Can also be passed directly to the BuildSlave constructor in buildbot.tac. If

set, it allows the buildslave to initiate a graceful shutdown, meaning that it

will ask the master to shut down the slave when the current build, if any, is

complete.

Setting allow_shutdown to file will cause the buildslave to watch shutdown.stamp in basedir for updates to its mtime. When the mtime changes, the slave will request a graceful shutdown from the master. The file does not need to exist prior to starting the slave.

Setting allow_shutdown to signal will set up a SIGHUP handler to start a graceful shutdown. When the signal is received, the slave will request a graceful shutdown from the master.

The default value is None, in which case this feature will be disabled.

Both master and slave must be at least version 0.8.3 for this feature to work.

Other Buildslave Configuration¶

unicode_encoding

This represents the encoding that buildbot should use when converting unicode commandline arguments into byte strings in order to pass to the operating system when spawning new processes.

The default value is what Python's sys.getfilesystemencoding returns, which on Windows is 'mbcs', on Mac OSX is 'utf-8', and on Unix depends on your locale settings.

If you need a different encoding, this can be changed in your build slave's buildbot.tac file by adding a unicode_encoding argument to the BuildSlave constructor.

s = BuildSlave(buildmaster_host, port, slavename, passwd, basedir,
               keepalive, usepty, umask=umask, maxdelay=maxdelay,
               unicode_encoding='utf-8', allow_shutdown='signal')

Upgrading an Existing Buildslave¶

If you have just installed a new version of Buildbot-slave, you may need to take some steps to upgrade it. If you are upgrading to version 0.8.2 or later, you can run

buildslave upgrade-slave /path/to/buildslave/dir

Version-specific Notes¶

Upgrading a Buildslave to Buildbot-slave-0.8.1¶

Before Buildbot version 0.8.1, the Buildbot master and slave were part of the same distribution. As of version 0.8.1, the buildslave is a separate distribution.

As of this release, you will need to install buildbot-slave to run a slave.

Any automatic startup scripts that had run buildbot start for previous versions should be changed to run buildslave start instead.

If you are running a version later than 0.8.1, then you can skip the remainder of this section: the `upgrade-slave command will take care of this. If you are upgrading directly to 0.8.1, read on.

The existing buildbot.tac for any buildslaves running older versions will need to be edited or replaced. If the loss of cached buildslave state (e.g., for Source steps in copy mode) is not problematic, the easiest solution is to simply delete the slave directory and re-run buildslave create-slave.

If deleting the slave directory is problematic, the change to buildbot.tac is simple. On line 3, replace

from buildbot.slave.bot import BuildSlave

with

from buildslave.bot import BuildSlave

After this change, the buildslave should start as usual.

Launching the daemons¶

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

# start a master
buildbot start [ BASEDIR ]
# start a slave
buildslave start [ SLAVE_BASEDIR ]

The BASEDIR is option and can be omitted if the current directory contains the buildbot configuration (the buildbot.tac file).

buildbot start

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 [1]

@reboot buildbot start [ BASEDIR ]

When you run crontab to set this up, remember to do it as the buildmaster or buildslave account! If you add this to your crontab when running as your regular account (or worse yet, root), then the daemon will run as the wrong user, quite possibly as one with more authority than you intended to provide.

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.

Some distributions may include conveniences to make starting buildbot at boot time easy. For instance, with the default buildbot package in Debian-based distributions, you may only need to modify /etc/default/buildbot (see also /etc/init.d/buildbot, which reads the configuration in /etc/default/buildbot).

Buildbot also comes with its own init scripts that provide support for controlling multi-slave and multi-master setups (mostly because they are based on the init script from the Debian package). With a little modification these scripts can be used both on Debian and RHEL-based distributions and may thus prove helpful to package maintainers who are working on buildbot (or those that haven't yet split buildbot into master and slave packages).

# install as /etc/default/buildslave
#         or /etc/sysconfig/buildslave
master/contrib/init-scripts/buildslave.default

# install as /etc/default/buildmaster
#         or /etc/sysconfig/buildmaster
master/contrib/init-scripts/buildmaster.default

# install as /etc/init.d/buildslave
slave/contrib/init-scripts/buildslave.init.sh

# install as /etc/init.d/buildmaster
slave/contrib/init-scripts/buildmaster.init.sh

# ... and tell sysvinit about them
chkconfig buildmaster reset
# ... or
update-rc.d buildmaster defaults

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.

Shutdown¶

To stop a buildmaster or buildslave manually, use:

buildbot stop [ BASEDIR ]
# or
buildslave stop [ SLAVE_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. Of course, this only works on Unix-like systems with signal support, and won't work on Windows. The following shortcut is available:

buildbot reconfig [ BASEDIR ]

When you update the Buildbot code to a new release, you will need to restart the buildmaster and/or buildslave before it can take advantage of the new code. You can do a buildbot stop BASEDIR and buildbot start BASEDIR in quick succession, or you can use the restart shortcut, which does both steps for you:

buildbot restart [ BASEDIR ]

Buildslaves can similarly be restarted with:

buildslave restart [ BASEDIR ]

There are certain configuration changes that are not handled cleanly by buildbot reconfig. If this occurs, buildbot restart is a more robust tool to fully switch over to the new configuration.

buildbot restart may also be used to start a stopped Buildbot instance. This behaviour is useful when writing scripts that stop, start and restart Buildbot.

A buildslave may also be gracefully shutdown from the WebStatus status plugin. This is useful to shutdown a buildslave without interrupting any current builds. The buildmaster will wait until the buildslave is finished all its current builds, and will then tell the buildslave to shutdown.

Maintenance¶

The buildmaster can be configured to send out email notifications when a slave has been offline for a while. Be sure to configure the buildmaster with a contact email address for each slave so these notifications are sent to someone who can bring it back online.

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 i-path './public_html/*' \
    -prune -o -type f -mtime +14 -exec rm {} \;
@weekly cd BASEDIR && find twistd.log* -mtime +14 -exec rm {} \;

Alternatively, you can configure a maximum number of old logs to be kept using the --log-count command line option when running buildslave create-slave or buildbot create-master.

Troubleshooting¶

Here are a few hints on diagnosing common problems.

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.

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, buildslave restart BASEDIR will speed up the process.

[1]	This `@reboot` syntax is understood by Vixie cron, which is the flavor usually provided with Linux systems. Other unices may have a cron that doesn't understand `@reboot`:

Contrib Scripts¶

While some features of Buildbot are included in the distribution, others are only available in contrib/ in the source directory. The latest versions of such scripts are available at http://github.com/buildbot/buildbot/tree/master/master/contrib.

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.

Source Stamps¶

Source code comes from repositories, provided by version control systems. Repositories are generally identified by URLs, e.g., git://github.com/buildbot/buildbot.git.

In these days of distributed version control systems, the same codebase may appear in multiple repositories. For example, https://github.com/mozilla/mozilla-central and http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-release both contain the Firefox codebase, although not exactly the same code.

Many projects are built from multiple codebases. For example, a company may build several applications based on the same core library. The "app" codebase and the "core" codebase are in separate repositories, but are compiled together and constitute a single project. Changes to either codebase should cause a rebuild of the application.

Most version control systems define some sort of revision that can be used (sometimes in combination with a branch) to uniquely specify a particular version of the source code.

To build a project, Buildbot needs to know exactly which version of each codebase it should build. It uses a source stamp to do so for each codebase; the collection of sourcestamps required for a project is called a source stamp set.

Version Control Systems¶

Buildbot supports a significant number of version control systems, so it treats them abstractly.

For purposes of deciding when to perform builds, Buildbot's change sources monitor repositories, and represent any updates to those repositories as changes. These change sources fall broadly into two categories: pollers which periodically check the repository for updates; and hooks, where the repository is configured to notify Buildbot whenever an update occurs.

This concept does not map perfectly to every version control system. For example, for CVS Buildbot must guess that version updates made to multiple files within a short time represent a single change; for DVCS's like Git, Buildbot records a change when a commit is pushed to the monitored repository, not when it is initially committed. We assume that the Changes arrive at the master in the same order in which they are committed to the repository.

When it comes time to actually perform a build, a scheduler prepares a source stamp set, as described above, based on its configuration. When the build begins, one or more source steps use the information in the source stamp set to actually check out the source code, using the normal VCS commands.

Tree Stability¶

Changes tend to arrive at a buildmaster in bursts. In many cases, these bursts of changes are meant to be taken together. For example, a developer may have pushed multiple commits to a DVCS that comprise the same new feature or bugfix. To avoid trying to build every change, Buildbot supports the notion of tree stability, by waiting for a burst of changes to finish before starting to schedule builds. This is implemented as a timer, with builds not scheduled until no changes have occurred for the duration of the timer.

How Different VC Systems Specify Sources¶

For CVS, the static specifications are repository and module. In addition to those, each build uses a timestamp (or omits the timestamp to mean the latest) and branch tag (which defaults to HEAD). 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. When branches are used, the repository and module form a static baseURL, while each build has a revision number and a branch (which defaults to a statically-specified defaultBranch). The baseURL and branch are simply concatenated together to derive the svnurl to use for the checkout.

Perforce is similar. The server is specified through a P4PORT parameter. Module and branch are specified in a single depot path, and revisions are depot-wide. When branches are used, the p4base and defaultBranch are concatenated together to produce the depot path.

Bzr (which is a descendant of Arch/Bazaar, and is frequently referred to as "Bazaar") has the same sort of repository-vs-workspace model as Arch, but the repository data can either be stored inside the working directory or kept elsewhere (either on the same machine or on an entirely different machine). For the purposes of Buildbot (which never commits changes), the repository is specified with a URL and a revision number.

The most common way to obtain read-only access to a bzr tree is via HTTP, simply by making the repository visible through a web server like Apache. Bzr can also use FTP and SFTP servers, if the buildslave process has sufficient privileges to access them. Higher performance can be obtained by running a special Bazaar-specific server. None of these matter to the buildbot: the repository URL just has to match the kind of server being used. The repoURL argument provides the location of the repository.

Branches are expressed as subdirectories of the main central repository, which means that if branches are being used, the BZR step is given a baseURL and defaultBranch instead of getting the repoURL argument.

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. Multiple branches are implemented by using multiple repositories (possibly living on the same server).

Builders which use Darcs therefore have a static repourl which specifies the location of the repository. If branches are being used, the source Step is instead configured with a baseURL and a defaultBranch, and the two strings are simply concatenated together to obtain the repository's URL. Each build then has a specific branch which replaces defaultBranch, or just uses the default one. Instead of a revision number, each build can have a context, which is a string that records all the patches that are present in a given tree (this is the output of darcs changes --context, and is considerably less concise than, e.g. Subversion's revision number, but the patch-reordering flexibility of Darcs makes it impossible to provide a shorter useful specification).

Mercurial is like Darcs, in that each branch is stored in a separate repository. The repourl, baseURL, and defaultBranch arguments are all handled the same way as with Darcs. The revision, however, is the hash identifier returned by hg identify.

Git also follows a decentralized model, and each repository can have several branches and tags. The source Step is configured with a static repourl which specifies the location of the repository. In addition, an optional branch parameter can be specified to check out code from a specific branch instead of the default master branch. The revision is specified as a SHA1 hash as returned by e.g. git rev-parse. No attempt is made to ensure that the specified revision is actually a subset of the specified branch.

Monotone is another that follows a decentralized model where each repository can have several branches and tags. The source Step is configured with static repourl and branch parameters, which specifies the location of the repository and the branch to use. The revision is specified as a SHA1 hash as returned by e.g. mtn automate select w:. No attempt is made to ensure that the specified revision is actually a subset of the specified branch.

Changes¶

Who¶

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. Each StatusNotifier will map the who attribute into something appropriate for their particular means of communication: an email address, an IRC handle, etc.

This who attribute is also parsed and stored into Buildbot's database (see User Objects). Currently, only who attributes in Changes from git repositories are translated into user objects, but in the future all incoming Changes will have their who parsed and stored.

Files¶

It also has a list of files, which are just the tree-relative filenames of any files that were added, deleted, or modified for this Change. These filenames are used by the fileIsImportant function (in the Scheduler) to decide whether it is worth triggering a new build or not, e.g. the function could use the following function to only run a build if a C file were checked in:

def has_C_files(change):
    for name in change.files:
        if name.endswith(".c"):
            return True
    return False

Certain BuildSteps can also use the list of changed files to run a more targeted series of tests, e.g. the python_twisted.Trial step can run just the unit tests that provide coverage for the modified .py files instead of running the full test suite.

Comments¶

The Change also has a comments attribute, which is a string containing any checkin comments.

Project¶

The project attribute of a change or source stamp describes the project to which it corresponds, as a short human-readable string. This is useful in cases where multiple independent projects are built on the same buildmaster. In such cases, it can be used to control which builds are scheduled for a given commit, and to limit status displays to only one project.

Repository¶

This attribute specifies the repository in which this change occurred. In the case of DVCS's, this information may be required to check out the committed source code. However, using the repository from a change has security risks: if Buildbot is configured to blindly trust this information, then it may easily be tricked into building arbitrary source code, potentially compromising the buildslaves and the integrity of subsequent builds.

Codebase¶

This attribute specifies the codebase to which this change was made. As described above, multiple repositories may contain the same codebase. A change's codebase is usually determined by the codebaseGenerator configuration. By default the codebase is ''; this value is used automatically for single-codebase configurations.

Revision¶

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.

Revisions are always strings.

CVS: revision is the seconds since the epoch as an integer.
SVN: revision is the revision number
Darcs: revision is a large string, the output of darcs changes --context
Mercurial: revision is a short string (a hash ID), the output of hg identify
P4: revision is the transaction number
Git: revision is a short string (a SHA1 hash), the output of e.g. git rev-parse

Branches¶

The Change might also have a branch attribute. This indicates that all of the Change's files are in the same named branch. The Schedulers get to decide whether the branch should be built or not.

For VC systems like CVS, Git and Monotone the branch name is unrelated to the filename. (that is, the branch name and the filename inhabit unrelated namespaces). For SVN, branches are expressed as subdirectories of the repository, so the file's svnurl is a combination of some base URL, the branch name, and the filename within the branch. (In a sense, the branch name and the filename inhabit the same namespace). Darcs branches are subdirectories of a base URL just like SVN. Mercurial branches are the same as Darcs.

CVS: branch='warner-newfeature', files=['src/foo.c']
SVN: branch='branches/warner-newfeature', files=['src/foo.c']
Darcs: branch='warner-newfeature', files=['src/foo.c']
Mercurial: branch='warner-newfeature', files=['src/foo.c']
Git: branch='warner-newfeature', files=['src/foo.c']
Monotone: branch='warner-newfeature', files=['src/foo.c']

Change Properties¶

A Change may have one or more properties attached to it, usually specified through the Force Build form or sendchange. Properties are discussed in detail in the Build Properties section.

Scheduling Builds¶

Each Buildmaster has a set of Scheduler objects, each of which gets a copy of every incoming Change. The Schedulers are responsible for deciding when Builds should be run. Some Buildbot installations might have a single Scheduler, while others may have several, each for a different purpose.

For example, a quick scheduler might exist to give immediate feedback to developers, hoping to catch obvious problems in the code that can be detected quickly. These typically do not run the full test suite, nor do they run on a wide variety of platforms. They also usually do a VC update rather than performing a brand-new checkout each time.

A separate full scheduler might run more comprehensive tests, to catch more subtle problems. configured to run after the quick scheduler, to give developers time to commit fixes to bugs caught by the quick scheduler before running the comprehensive tests. This scheduler would also feed multiple Builders.

Many schedulers can be configured to wait a while after seeing a source-code change - this is the tree stable timer. The timer allows multiple commits to be "batched" together. This is particularly useful in distributed version control systems, where a developer may push a long sequence of changes all at once. To save resources, it's often desirable only to test the most recent change.

Schedulers can also filter out the changes they are interested in, based on a number of criteria. For example, a scheduler that only builds documentation might skip any changes that do not affect the documentation. Schedulers can also filter on the branch to which a commit was made.

There is some support for configuring dependencies between builds - for example, you may want to build packages only for revisions which pass all of the unit tests. This support is under active development in Buildbot, and is referred to as "build coordination".

Periodic builds (those which are run every N seconds rather than after new Changes arrive) are triggered by a special Periodic Scheduler subclass.

Each Scheduler creates and submits BuildSet objects to the BuildMaster, which is then responsible for making sure the individual BuildRequests are delivered to the target Builders.

Scheduler instances are activated by placing them in the c['schedulers'] list in the buildmaster config file. Each Scheduler has a unique name.

BuildSets¶

A BuildSet is the name given to a set of Builds that all compile/test the same version of the tree on multiple Builders. In general, all these component Builds will perform the same sequence of Steps, using the same source code, but on different platforms or against a different set of libraries.

The BuildSet is tracked as a single unit, which fails if any of the component Builds have failed, and therefore can succeed only if all of the component Builds have succeeded. There are two kinds of status notification messages that can be emitted for a BuildSet: the firstFailure type (which fires as soon as we know the BuildSet will fail), and the Finished type (which fires once the BuildSet has completely finished, regardless of whether the overall set passed or failed).

A BuildSet is created with set of one or more source stamp tuples of (branch, revision, changes, patch), some of which may be None, and a list of Builders on which it is to be run. They are then given to the BuildMaster, which is responsible for creating a separate BuildRequest for each Builder.

There are a couple of different likely values for the SourceStamp:

(revision=None, changes=CHANGES, patch=None): This is a SourceStamp used when a series of Changes have triggered a build. The VC step will attempt to check out a tree that contains CHANGES (and any changes that occurred before CHANGES, but not any that occurred after them.)
(revision=None, changes=None, patch=None): This builds the most recent code on the default branch. This is the sort of SourceStamp that would be used on a Build that was triggered by a user request, or a Periodic scheduler. It is also possible to configure the VC Source Step to always check out the latest sources rather than paying attention to the Changes in the SourceStamp, which will result in same behavior as this.
(branch=BRANCH, revision=None, changes=None, patch=None): This builds the most recent code on the given BRANCH. Again, this is generally triggered by a user request or Periodic build.
(revision=REV, changes=None, patch=(LEVEL, DIFF, SUBDIR_ROOT)): This checks out the tree at the given revision REV, then applies a patch (using patch -pLEVEL <DIFF) from inside the relative directory SUBDIR_ROOT. Item SUBDIR_ROOT is optional and defaults to the builder working directory. The try command creates this kind of SourceStamp. If patch is None, the patching step is bypassed.

The buildmaster is responsible for turning the BuildSet into a set of BuildRequest objects and queueing them on the appropriate Builders.

BuildRequests¶

A BuildRequest is a request to build a specific set of source code (specified by one ore more source stamps) on a single Builder. Each Builder runs the BuildRequest as soon as it can (i.e. when an associated buildslave becomes free). BuildRequests are prioritized from oldest to newest, so when a buildslave becomes free, the Builder with the oldest BuildRequest is run.

The BuildRequest contains one SourceStamp specification per codebase. The actual process of running the build (the series of Steps that will be executed) is implemented by the Build object. In this future this might be changed, to have the Build define what gets built, and a separate BuildProcess (provided by the Builder) to define how it gets built.

The BuildRequest may be mergeable with other compatible BuildRequests. Builds that are triggered by incoming Changes will generally be mergeable. Builds that are triggered by user requests are generally not, unless they are multiple requests to build the latest sources of the same branch. A merge of buildrequests is performed per codebase, thus on changes having the same codebase.

Builders¶

The Buildmaster runs a collection of Builders, each of which handles a single type of build (e.g. full versus quick), on one or more build slaves. Builders serve as a kind of queue for a particular type of build. 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 is a long-lived object which controls a sequence of Builds. Each Builder is created when the config file is first parsed, and lives forever (or rather until it is removed from the config file). It mediates the connections to the buildslaves that do all the work, and is responsible for creating the Build objects - Builds.

Each builder gets a unique name, and the path name of a directory where it gets to do all its work (there is a buildmaster-side directory for keeping status information, as well as a buildslave-side directory where the actual checkout/compile/test commands are executed).

Build Factories¶

A builder also has a BuildFactory, which is responsible for creating new Build instances: because the Build instance is what actually performs each build, choosing the BuildFactory is the way to specify what happens each time a build is done (Builds).

Build Slaves¶

Each builder is associated with one of more BuildSlaves. A builder which is used to perform Mac OS X builds (as opposed to Linux or Solaris builds) should naturally be associated with a Mac buildslave.

If multiple buildslaves are available for any given builder, you will have some measure of redundancy: in case one slave goes offline, the others can still keep the Builder working. In addition, multiple buildslaves will allow multiple simultaneous builds for the same Builder, which might be useful if you have a lot of forced or try builds taking place.

If you use this feature, it is important to make sure that the buildslaves are all, in fact, capable of running the given build. The slave hosts should be configured similarly, otherwise you will spend a lot of time trying (unsuccessfully) to reproduce a failure that only occurs on some of the buildslaves and not the others. Different platforms, operating systems, versions of major programs or libraries, all these things mean you should use separate Builders.

Builds¶

A build is a single compile or test run of a particular version of the source code, and is comprised of a series of steps. It is ultimately up to you what constitutes a build, but for compiled software it is generally the checkout, configure, make, and make check sequence. For interpreted projects like Python modules, a build is generally a checkout followed by an invocation of the bundled test suite.

A BuildFactory describes the steps a build will perform. The builder which starts a build uses its configured build factory to determine the build's steps.

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.

Users also may have different levels of authorization when issuing Buildbot commands, such as forcing a build from the web interface or from an IRC channel (see WebStatus and IRC).

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 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. In the future, the responsibility for managing users will be transferred to User Objects.

The who fields in git Changes are used to create User Objects, which allows for more control and flexibility in how Buildbot manages users.

User Objects¶

User Objects allow Buildbot to better manage users throughout its various interactions with users (see Change Sources and Status Targets). The User Objects are stored in the Buildbot database and correlate the various attributes that a user might have: irc, Git, etc.

Changes¶

Incoming Changes all have a who attribute attached to them that specifies which developer is responsible for that Change. When a Change is first rendered, the who attribute is parsed and added to the database if it doesn't exist or checked against an existing user. The who attribute is formatted in different ways depending on the version control system that the Change came from.

git: who attributes take the form Full Name <Email>.
svn: who attributes are of the form Username.
hg: who attributes are free-form strings, but usually adhere to similar conventions as git attributes (Full Name <Email>).
cvs: who attributes are of the form Username.
darcs: who attributes contain an Email and may also include a Full Name like git attributes.
bzr: who attributes are free-form strings like hg, and can include a Username, Email, and/or Full Name.

Tools¶

For managing users manually, use the buildbot user command, which allows you to add, remove, update, and show various attributes of users in the Buildbot database (see Command-line Tool).

To show all of the users in the database in a more pretty manner, use the users page in the WebStatus.

Uses¶

Correlating the various bits and pieces that Buildbot views as users also means that one attribute of a user can be translated into another. This provides a more complete view of users throughout Buildbot.

One such use is being able to find email addresses based on a set of Builds to notify users through the MailNotifier. This process is explained more clearly in :ref:Email-Addresses.

Another way to utilize User Objects is through UsersAuth for web authentication (see WebStatus). To use UsersAuth, you need to set a bb_username and bb_password via the buildbot user command line tool to check against. The password will be encrypted before storing in the database along with other user attributes.

Doing Things With Users¶

Each change has a single user who is responsible for it. Most builds have a set of changes: the build generally represents the first time these changes have been built and tested by the Buildbot. The build has a blamelist that is the union of the users responsible for all the build's changes. If the build was created by a Try Schedulers this list will include the submitter of the try job, if known.

The build provides a list of users who are interested in the build -- the interested users. Usually this is equal to the blamelist, but may also be expanded, e.g., to include the current build sherrif or a module's maintainer.

If desired, the buildbot can notify the interested users until the problem is resolved.

Email Addresses¶

The MailNotifier is 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 host being named cvs.project.org), 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 Git) 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.

If an EmailLookup object isn't given to the MailNotifier, the MailNotifier will try to find emails through User Objects. This will work the same as if an EmailLookup object was used if every user in the Build's Interested Users list has an email in the database for them. If a user whose change led to a Build doesn't have an email attribute, that user will not receive an email. If extraRecipients is given, those users are still sent mail when the EmailLookup object is not specified.

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.

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.

In the future, 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 will have 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.

These operations and authentication of commands issued by particular nicknames will be implemented in User Objects.

Live Status Clients¶

The Buildbot also offers a desktop status client interface which can display real-time build status in a GUI panel on the developer's desktop.

Build Properties¶

Each build has a set of Build Properties, which can be used by its build steps to modify their actions. These properties, in the form of key-value pairs, provide a general framework for dynamically altering the behavior of a build based on its circumstances.

Properties form a simple kind of variable in a build. Some properties are set when the build starts, and properties can be changed as a build progresses -- properties set or changed in one step may be accessed in subsequent steps. Property values can be numbers, strings, lists, or dictionaries - basically, anything that can be represented in JSON.

Properties are very flexible, and can be used to implement all manner of functionality. Here are some examples:

Most Source steps record the revision that they checked out in the got_revision property. A later step could use this property to specify the name of a fully-built tarball, dropped in an easily-accessible directory for later testing.

Note

In builds with more than one codebase, the got_revision property is a dictionary, keyed by codebase.

Some projects want to perform nightly builds as well as building in response to committed changes. Such a project would run two schedulers, both pointing to the same set of builders, but could provide an is_nightly property so that steps can distinguish the nightly builds, perhaps to run more resource-intensive tests.

Some projects have different build processes on different systems. Rather than create a build factory for each slave, the steps can use buildslave properties to identify the unique aspects of each slave and adapt the build process dynamically.

Multiple-Codebase Builds¶

What if an end-product is composed of code from several codebases? Changes may arrive from different repositories within the tree-stable-timer period. Buildbot will not only use the source-trees that contain changes but also needs the remaining source-trees to build the complete product.

For this reason a Scheduler can be configured to base a build on a set of several source-trees that can (partly) be overridden by the information from incoming Changes.

As described above, the source for each codebase is identified by a source stamp, containing its repository, branch and revision. A full build set will specify a source stamp set describing the source to use for each codebase.

Configuring all of this takes a coordinated approach. A complete multiple repository configuration consists of:

a codebase generator

Every relevant change arriving from a VC must contain a codebase. This is done by a codebaseGenerator that is defined in the configuration. Most generators examine the repository of a change to determine its codebase, using project-specific rules.

some schedulers

Each scheduler has to be configured with a set of all required codebases to build a product. These codebases indicate the set of required source-trees. In order for the scheduler to be able to produce a complete set for each build, the configuration can give a default repository, branch, and revision for each codebase. When a scheduler must generate a source stamp for a codebase that has received no changes, it applies these default values.

multiple source steps - one for each codebase

A Builders's build factory must include a source step for each codebase. Each of the source steps has a codebase attribute which is used to select an appropriate source stamp from the source stamp set for a build. This information comes from the arrived changes or from the scheduler's configured default values.

Note

Each source step has to have its own workdir set in order for the checkout to be done for each codebase in its own directory.

Note

Ensure you specify the codebase within your source step's Interpolate() calls (ex. http://.../svn/%(src:codebase:branch)s). See Interpolate for details.

Warning

Defining a codebaseGenerator that returns non-empty (not '') codebases will change the behavior of all the schedulers.

Configuration¶

The following sections describe the configuration of the various Buildbot components. The information available here is sufficient to create basic build and test configurations, and does not assume great familiarity with Python.

In more advanced Buildbot configurations, Buildbot acts as a framework for a continuous-integration application. The next section, Customization, describes this approach, with frequent references into the development documentation.

Configuring Buildbot¶

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 the buildbot create-master command). 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 buildbot.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.

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 minimum 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.

The beginning of the master.cfg file typically starts with something like:

BuildmasterConfig = c = {}

Therefore a config key like change_source will usually appear in master.cfg as c['change_source'].

See Buildmaster Configuration Index for a full list of BuildMasterConfig keys.

Basic Python Syntax¶

The master configuration file is interpreted as Python, allowing the full flexibility of the language. For the configurations described in this section, a detailed knowledge of Python is not required, but the basic syntax is easily described.

Python comments start with a hash character #, tuples are defined with (parenthesis, pairs), and lists (arrays) are defined with [square, brackets]. Tuples and lists 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, described section-by-section in subsequent chapters.

Predefined Config File Symbols¶

The following symbols are automatically available for use in the configuration file.

basedir

the base directory for the buildmaster. This string has not been expanded, so it may start with a tilde. It needs to be expanded before use. The config file is located in

os.path.expanduser(os.path.join(basedir, 'master.cfg'))

__file__

the absolute path of the config file. The config file's directory is located in os.path.dirname(__file__).

Testing the Config File¶

To verify that the config file is well-formed and contains no deprecated or invalid elements, use the checkconfig command, passing it either a master directory or a config file.

% buildbot checkconfig master.cfg
Config file is good!
# or
% buildbot checkconfig /tmp/masterdir
Config file is good!

If the config file has deprecated features (perhaps because you've upgraded the buildmaster and need to update the config file to match), they will be announced by checkconfig. In this case, the config file will work, but you should really remove the deprecated items and use the recommended replacements instead:

% buildbot checkconfig master.cfg
/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/buildbot/master.py:559: DeprecationWarning: c['sources'] is
deprecated as of 0.7.6 and will be removed by 0.8.0 . Please use c['change_source'] instead.
Config file is good!

If you have errors in your configuration file, checkconfig will let you know:

% buildbot checkconfig master.cfg
Configuration Errors:
c['slaves'] must be a list of BuildSlave instances
no slaves are configured
builder 'smoketest' uses unknown slaves 'linux-002'

If the config file is simply broken, that will be caught too:

% buildbot checkconfig master.cfg
error while parsing config file:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/buildbot/master/bin/buildbot", line 4, in <module>
    runner.run()
File "/home/buildbot/master/buildbot/scripts/runner.py", line 1358, in run
    if not doCheckConfig(so):
File "/home/buildbot/master/buildbot/scripts/runner.py", line 1079, in doCheckConfig
    return cl.load(quiet=quiet)
File "/home/buildbot/master/buildbot/scripts/checkconfig.py", line 29, in load
    self.basedir, self.configFileName)
--- <exception caught here> ---
File "/home/buildbot/master/buildbot/config.py", line 147, in loadConfig
    exec f in localDict
exceptions.SyntaxError: invalid syntax (master.cfg, line 52)
Configuration Errors:
error while parsing config file: invalid syntax (master.cfg, line 52) (traceback in logfile)

Loading the Config File¶

The config file is only read at specific points in time. It is first read when the buildmaster is launched.

Reloading the Config File (reconfig)¶

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 reconfig BASEDIR

This command will show you all of the lines from twistd.log that relate to the reconfiguration. If there are any problems during the config-file reload, they will be displayed in these lines.

When reloading the config file, the buildmaster will endeavor to change as little as possible about the running system. For example, although old status targets may be shut down and new ones started up, any status targets that were not changed since the last time the config file was read will be left running and untouched. Likewise any Builders which have not been changed will be left running. If a Builder is modified (say, the build process is changed) while a Build is currently running, that Build will keep running with the old process until it completes. Any previously queued Builds (or Builds which get queued after the reconfig) will use the new process.

Warning

Buildbot's reconfiguration system is fragile for a few difficult-to-fix reasons:

Any modules imported by the configuration file are not automatically reloaded. Python modules such as http://pypi.python.org/pypi/lazy-reload may help here, but reloading modules is fraught with subtleties and difficult-to-decipher failure cases.

During the reconfiguration, active internal objects are divorced from the service hierarchy, leading to tracebacks in the web interface and other components. These are ordinarily transient, but with HTTP connection caching (either by the browser or an intervening proxy) they can last for a long time.

If the new configuration file is invalid, it is possible for Buildbot's internal state to be corrupted, leading to undefined results. When this occurs, it is best to restart the master.

For more advanced configurations, it is impossible for Buildbot to tell if the configuration for a Builder or Scheduler has changed, and thus the Builder or Scheduler will always be reloaded. This occurs most commonly when a callable is passed as a configuration parameter.

The bbproto project (at https://github.com/dabrahams/bbproto) may help to construct large (multi-file) configurations which can be effectively reloaded and reconfigured.

Reconfig by Debug Client¶

The debug tool (buildbot debugclient --master HOST:PORT) has a Reload .cfg button which will also trigger a reload.

Global Configuration¶

The keys in this section affect the operations of the buildmaster globally.

Database Specification¶

Buildbot requires a connection to a database to maintain certain state information, such as tracking pending build requests. In the default configuration Buildbot uses a file-based SQLite database, stored in the state.sqlite file of the master's base directory. Override this configuration with the db_url parameter.

Buildbot accepts a database configuration in a dictionary named db. All keys are optional:

c['db'] = {
    'db_url' : 'sqlite:///state.sqlite',
    'db_poll_interval' : 30,
}

The db_url key indicates the database engine to use. The format of this parameter is completely documented at http://www.sqlalchemy.org/docs/dialects/, but is generally of the form:

driver://[username:password@]host:port/database[?args]

The optional db_poll_interval specifies the interval, in seconds, between checks for pending tasks in the database. This parameter is generally only useful in multi-master mode. See Multi-master mode.

These parameters can be specified directly in the configuration dictionary, as c['db_url'] and c['db_poll_interval'], although this method is deprecated.

The following sections give additional information for particular database backends:

SQLite¶

For sqlite databases, since there is no host and port, relative paths are specified with sqlite:/// and absolute paths with sqlite:////. Examples:

c['db_url'] = "sqlite:///state.sqlite"

SQLite requires no special configuration.

If Buildbot produces "database is locked" exceptions, try adding serialize_access=1 to the DB URL as a workaround:

c['db_url'] = "sqlite:///state.sqlite?serialize_access=1"

and please file a bug at http://trac.buildbot.net.

MySQL¶

c['db_url'] = "mysql://user:pass@somehost.com/database_name?max_idle=300"

The max_idle argument for MySQL connections is unique to Buildbot, and should be set to something less than the wait_timeout configured for your server. This controls the SQLAlchemy pool_recycle parameter, which defaults to no timeout. Setting this parameter ensures that connections are closed and re-opened after the configured amount of idle time. If you see errors such as _mysql_exceptions.OperationalError: (2006, 'MySQL server has gone away'), this means your max_idle setting is probably too high. show global variables like 'wait_timeout'; will show what the currently configured wait_timeout is on your MySQL server.

Buildbot requires use_unique=True and charset=utf8, and will add them automatically, so they do not need to be specified in db_url.

MySQL defaults to the MyISAM storage engine, but this can be overridden with the storage_engine URL argument.

Note that, because of InnoDB's extremely short key length limitations, it cannot be used to run Buildbot. See http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=4541 for more information.

Buildbot uses temporary tables internally to manage large transactions.

MySQL has trouble doing replication with temporary tables, so if you are using a replicated MySQL installation, you may need to handle this situation carefully. The MySQL documentation (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/replication-features-temptables.html) recommends using --replicate-wild-ignore-table to ignore temporary tables that should not be replicated. All Buildbot temporary tables begin with bbtmp_, so an option such as --replicate-wild-ignore-table=bbtmp_.* may help.

Postgres¶

c['db_url'] = "postgresql://username@hostname/dbname"

PosgreSQL requires no special configuration.

Multi-master mode¶

Normally buildbot operates using a single master process that uses the configured database to save state.

It is possible to configure buildbot to have multiple master processes that share state in the same database. This has been well tested using a MySQL database. There are several benefits of Multi-master mode:

You can have large numbers of build slaves handling the same queue of build requests. A single master can only handle so many slaves (the number is based on a number of factors including type of builds, number of builds, and master and slave IO and CPU capacity--there is no fixed formula). By adding another master which shares the queue of build requests, you can attach more slaves to this additional master, and increase your build throughput.

You can shut one master down to do maintenance, and other masters will continue to do builds.

State that is shared in the database includes:

List of changes

Scheduler names and internal state

Build requests, including the builder name

Because of this shared state, you are strongly encouraged to:

Ensure that each named scheduler runs on only one master. If the same scheduler runs on multiple masters, it will trigger duplicate builds and may produce other undesirable behaviors.

Ensure builder names are unique for a given build factory implementation. You can have the same builder name configured on many masters, but if the build factories differ, you will get different results depending on which master claims the build.

One suggested configuration is to have one buildbot master configured with just the scheduler and change sources; and then other masters configured with just the builders.

To enable multi-master mode in this configuration, you will need to set the multiMaster option so that buildbot doesn't warn about missing schedulers or builders. You will also need to set db_poll_interval to specify the interval (in seconds) at which masters should poll the database for tasks.

# Enable multiMaster mode; disables warnings about unknown builders and
# schedulers
c['multiMaster'] = True
# Check for new build requests every 60 seconds
c['db'] = {
    'db_url' : 'mysql://...',
    'db_poll_interval' : 30,
}

Site Definitions¶

Three basic settings describe the buildmaster in status reports:

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

title is a short string that will appear at the top of this buildbot installation's html.WebStatus home page (linked to the titleURL), and is embedded in the title of the waterfall HTML page.

titleURL is a URL string that must end with a slash (/). HTML status displays will show title as a link to titleURL. This URL is often used 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 is visible. This URL must end with a slash (/). This typically uses the port number set for the web status (WebStatus): the buildbot needs your help to figure out a suitable externally-visible host URL.

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.

Log Handling¶

c['logCompressionLimit'] = 16384
c['logCompressionMethod'] = 'gz'
c['logMaxSize'] = 1024*1024 # 1M
c['logMaxTailSize'] = 32768

The logCompressionLimit enables compression of build logs on disk for logs that are bigger than the given size, or disables that completely if set to False. The default value is 4096, which should be a reasonable default on most file systems. This setting has no impact on status plugins, and merely affects the required disk space on the master for build logs.

The logCompressionMethod controls what type of compression is used for build logs. The default is 'bz2', and the other valid option is 'gz'. 'bz2' offers better compression at the expense of more CPU time.

The logMaxSize parameter sets an upper limit (in bytes) to how large logs from an individual build step can be. The default value is None, meaning no upper limit to the log size. Any output exceeding logMaxSize will be truncated, and a message to this effect will be added to the log's HEADER channel.

If logMaxSize is set, and the output from a step exceeds the maximum, the logMaxTailSize parameter controls how much of the end of the build log will be kept. The effect of setting this parameter is that the log will contain the first logMaxSize bytes and the last logMaxTailSize bytes of output. Don't set this value too high, as the the tail of the log is kept in memory.

Data Lifetime¶

Horizons¶

c['changeHorizon'] = 200
c['buildHorizon'] = 100
c['eventHorizon'] = 50
c['logHorizon'] = 40
c['buildCacheSize'] = 15

Buildbot stores historical information on disk in the form of "Pickle" files and compressed logfiles. In a large installation, these can quickly consume disk space, yet in many cases developers never consult this historical information.

The changeHorizon key determines how many changes the master will keep a record of. One place these changes are displayed is on the waterfall page. This parameter defaults to 0, which means keep all changes indefinitely.

The buildHorizon specifies the minimum number of builds for each builder which should be kept on disk. The eventHorizon specifies the minimum number of events to keep--events mostly describe connections and disconnections of slaves, and are seldom helpful to developers. The logHorizon gives the minimum number of builds for which logs should be maintained; this parameter must be less than or equal to buildHorizon. Builds older than logHorizon but not older than buildHorizon will maintain their overall status and the status of each step, but the logfiles will be deleted.

Caches¶

c['caches'] = {
    'Changes' : 100,     # formerly c['changeCacheSize']
    'Builds' : 500,      # formerly c['buildCacheSize']
    'chdicts' : 100,
    'BuildRequests' : 10,
    'SourceStamps' : 20,
    'ssdicts' : 20,
    'objectids' : 10,
    'usdicts' : 100,
}

The caches configuration key contains the configuration for Buildbot's in-memory caches. These caches keep frequently-used objects in memory to avoid unnecessary trips to the database or to pickle files. Caches are divided by object type, and each has a configurable maximum size.

The default size for each cache is 1, except where noted below. A value of 1 allows Buildbot to make a number of optimizations without consuming much memory. Larger, busier installations will likely want to increase these values.

The available caches are:

Changes

the number of change objects to cache in memory. This should be larger than the number of changes that typically arrive in the span of a few minutes, otherwise your schedulers will be reloading changes from the database every time they run. For distributed version control systems, like Git or Hg, several thousand changes may arrive at once, so setting this parameter to something like 10000 isn't unreasonable.

This parameter is the same as the deprecated global parameter changeCacheSize. Its default value is 10.

Builds

The buildCacheSize parameter gives the number of builds for each builder which are cached in memory. This number should be larger than the number of builds required for commonly-used status displays (the waterfall or grid views), so that those displays do not miss the cache on a refresh.

This parameter is the same as the deprecated global parameter buildCacheSize. Its default value is 15.

chdicts

The number of rows from the changes table to cache in memory. This value should be similar to the value for Changes.

BuildRequests

The number of BuildRequest objects kept in memory. This number should be higher than the typical number of outstanding build requests. If the master ordinarily finds jobs for BuildRequests immediately, you may set a lower value.

SourceStamps

the number of SourceStamp objects kept in memory. This number should generally be similar to the number BuildRequesets.

ssdicts

The number of rows from the sourcestamps table to cache in memory. This value should be similar to the value for SourceStamps.

objectids

The number of object IDs - a means to correlate an object in the Buildbot configuration with an identity in the database--to cache. In this version, object IDs are not looked up often during runtime, so a relatively low value such as 10 is fine.

usdicts

The number of rows from the users table to cache in memory. Note that for a given user there will be a row for each attribute that user has.

c['buildCacheSize'] = 15

Merging Build Requests¶

c['mergeRequests'] = True

This is a global default value for builders' mergeRequests parameter, and controls the merging of build requests.

This parameter can be overridden on a per-builder basis. See Merging Build Requests for the allowed values for this parameter.

Prioritizing Builders¶

def prioritizeBuilders(buildmaster, builders):
    # ...
c['prioritizeBuilders'] = prioritizeBuilders

By default, buildbot will attempt to start builds on builders in order, beginning with the builder with the oldest pending request. Customize this behavior with the prioritizeBuilders configuration key, which takes a callable. See Builder Priority Functions for details on this callable.

This parameter controls the order that the build master can start builds, and is useful in situations where there is resource contention between builders, e.g., for a test database. It does not affect the order in which a builder processes the build requests in its queue. For that purpose, see Prioritizing Builds.

Setting the PB Port for Slaves¶

c['slavePortnum'] = 10000

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. If your buildmaster is behind a firewall or a NAT box of some sort, you may have to configure your firewall to permit inbound connections to this port.

slavePortnum is a strports specification string, defined in the twisted.application.strports module (try pydoc twisted.application.strports to get documentation on the format).

This means that you can have the buildmaster listen on a localhost-only port by doing:

c['slavePortnum'] = "tcp:10000:interface=127.0.0.1"

This might be useful if you only run buildslaves on the same machine, and they are all configured to contact the buildmaster at localhost:10000.

Defining Global Properties¶

The properties configuration key defines a dictionary of properties that will be available to all builds started by the buildmaster:

c['properties'] = {
    'Widget-version' : '1.2',
    'release-stage' : 'alpha'
}

Debug Options¶

If you set 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 committing changes to your repository (or before you have the Change Sources configured.)

The debug tool uses the same port number as the slaves, slavePortnum, and you may configure its authentication credentials as follows:

c['debugPassword'] = "debugpassword"

Manhole¶

If you set manhole to an instance of one of the classes in buildbot.manhole, you can telnet or ssh 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. It exposes full access to the buildmaster's account (including the ability to modify and delete files), so it should not be enabled with a weak or easily guessable password.

There are three separate Manhole classes. Two of them use SSH, one uses unencrypted telnet. Two of them use a username+password combination to grant access, one of them uses an SSH-style authorized_keys file which contains a list of ssh public keys.

Note

Using any Manhole requires that pycrypto and pyasn1 be installed. These are not part of the normal Buildbot dependencies.

manhole.AuthorizedKeysManhole: You construct this with the name of a file that contains one SSH public key per line, just like ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. If you provide a non-absolute filename, it will be interpreted relative to the buildmaster's base directory.
manhole.PasswordManhole: This one accepts SSH connections but asks for a username and password when authenticating. It accepts only one such pair.
manhole.TelnetManhole: This accepts regular unencrypted telnet connections, and asks for a username/password pair before providing access. Because this username/password is transmitted in the clear, and because Manhole access to the buildmaster is equivalent to granting full shell privileges to both the buildmaster and all the buildslaves (and to all accounts which then run code produced by the buildslaves), it is highly recommended that you use one of the SSH manholes instead.

# some examples:
from buildbot import manhole
c['manhole'] = manhole.AuthorizedKeysManhole(1234, "authorized_keys")
c['manhole'] = manhole.PasswordManhole(1234, "alice", "mysecretpassword")
c['manhole'] = manhole.TelnetManhole(1234, "bob", "snoop_my_password_please")

The Manhole instance can be configured to listen on a specific port. You may wish to have this listening port bind to the loopback interface (sometimes known as lo0, localhost, or 127.0.0.1) to restrict access to clients which are running on the same host.

from buildbot.manhole import PasswordManhole
c['manhole'] = PasswordManhole("tcp:9999:interface=127.0.0.1","admin","passwd")

To have the Manhole listen on all interfaces, use "tcp:9999" or simply 9999. This port specification uses twisted.application.strports, so you can make it listen on SSL or even UNIX-domain sockets if you want.

Note that using any Manhole requires that the TwistedConch package be installed.

The buildmaster's SSH server will use a different host key than the normal sshd running on a typical unix host. This will cause the ssh client to complain about a host key mismatch, because it does not realize there are two separate servers running on the same host. To avoid this, use a clause like the following in your .ssh/config file:

Host remotehost-buildbot
HostName remotehost
HostKeyAlias remotehost-buildbot
Port 9999
# use 'user' if you use PasswordManhole and your name is not 'admin'.
# if you use AuthorizedKeysManhole, this probably doesn't matter.
User admin

Using Manhole¶

After you have connected to a manhole instance, you will find yourself at a Python prompt. You have access to two objects: master (the BuildMaster) and status (the master's Status object). Most interesting objects on the master can be reached from these two objects.

To aid in navigation, the show method is defined. It displays the non-method attributes of an object.

A manhole session might look like:

>>> show(master)
data attributes of <buildbot.master.BuildMaster instance at 0x7f7a4ab7df38>
                       basedir : '/home/dustin/code/buildbot/t/buildbot/'...
                     botmaster : <type 'instance'>
                buildCacheSize : None
                  buildHorizon : None
                   buildbotURL : http://localhost:8010/
               changeCacheSize : None
                    change_svc : <type 'instance'>
                configFileName : master.cfg
                            db : <class 'buildbot.db.connector.DBConnector'>
              db_poll_interval : None
                        db_url : sqlite:///state.sqlite
                              ...
>>> show(master.botmaster.builders['win32'])
data attributes of <Builder ''builder'' at 48963528>
                              ...
>>> win32 = _
>>> win32.category = 'w32'

Metrics Options¶

c['metrics'] = dict(log_interval=10, periodic_interval=10)

metrics can be a dictionary that configures various aspects of the metrics subsystem. If metrics is None, then metrics collection, logging and reporting will be disabled.

log_interval determines how often metrics should be logged to twistd.log. It defaults to 60s. If set to 0 or None, then logging of metrics will be disabled. This value can be changed via a reconfig.

periodic_interval determines how often various non-event based metrics are collected, such as memory usage, uncollectable garbage, reactor delay. This defaults to 10s. If set to 0 or None, then periodic collection of this data is disabled. This value can also be changed via a reconfig.

Read more about metrics in the Metrics section in the developer documentation.

Users Options¶

from buildbot.process.users import manual
c['user_managers'] = []
c['user_managers'].append(manual.CommandlineUserManager(username="user",
                                                   passwd="userpw",
                                                   port=9990))

user_managers contains a list of ways to manually manage User Objects within Buildbot (see User Objects). Currently implemented is a commandline tool buildbot user, described at length in user. In the future, a web client will also be able to manage User Objects and their attributes.

As shown above, to enable the buildbot user tool, you must initialize a CommandlineUserManager instance in your master.cfg. CommandlineUserManager instances require the following arguments:

username: This is the username that will be registered on the PB connection and need to be used when calling buildbot user.
passwd: This is the passwd that will be registered on the PB connection and need to be used when calling buildbot user.
port: The PB connection port must be different than c['slavePortnum'] and be specified when calling buildbot user

Input Validation¶

import re
c['validation'] = {
    'branch' : re.compile(r'^[\w.+/~-]*$'),
    'revision' : re.compile(r'^[ \w\.\-\/]*$'),
    'property_name' : re.compile(r'^[\w\.\-\/\~:]*$'),
    'property_value' : re.compile(r'^[\w\.\-\/\~:]*$'),
}

This option configures the validation applied to user inputs of various types. This validation is important since these values are often included in command-line arguments executed on slaves. Allowing arbitrary input from untrusted users may raise security concerns.

The keys describe the type of input validated; the values are compiled regular expressions against which the input will be matched. The defaults for each type of input are those given in the example, above.

Revision Links¶

The revlink parameter is used to create links from revision IDs in the web status to a web-view of your source control system. The parameter's value must be a callable.

By default, Buildbot is configured to generate revlinks for a number of open source hosting platforms.

The callable takes the revision id and repository argument, and should return an URL to the revision. Note that the revision id may not always be in the form you expect, so code defensively. In particular, a revision of "??" may be supplied when no other information is available.

Note that SourceStamps that are not created from version-control changes (e.g., those created by a Nightly or Periodic scheduler) may have an empty repository string, if the repository is not known to the scheduler.

Revision Link Helpers¶

Buildbot provides two helpers for generating revision links. buildbot.revlinks.RevlinkMatcher takes a list of regular expressions, and replacement text. The regular expressions should all have the same number of capture groups. The replacement text should have sed-style references to that capture groups (i.e. '1' for the first capture group), and a single '%s' reference, for the revision ID. The repository given is tried against each regular expression in turn. The results are the substituted into the replacement text, along with the revision ID to obtain the revision link.

from buildbot import revlinks
c['revlink'] = revlinks.RevlinkMatch([r'git://notmuchmail.org/git/(.*)'],
                                      r'http://git.notmuchmail.org/git/\1/commit/%s')

buildbot.revlinks.RevlinkMultiplexer takes a list of revision link callables, and tries each in turn, returning the first successful match.

Codebase Generator¶

all_repositories = {
    r'https://hg/hg/mailsuite/mailclient': 'mailexe',
    r'https://hg/hg/mailsuite/mapilib': 'mapilib',
    r'https://hg/hg/mailsuite/imaplib': 'imaplib',
    r'https://github.com/mailinc/mailsuite/mailclient': 'mailexe',
    r'https://github.com/mailinc/mailsuite/mapilib': 'mapilib',
    r'https://github.com/mailinc/mailsuite/imaplib': 'imaplib',
}

def codebaseGenerator(chdict):
    return all_repositories[chdict['repository']]

c['codebaseGenerator'] = codebaseGenerator

For any incoming change, the codebase is set to ''. This codebase value is sufficient if all changes come from the same repository (or clones). If changes come from different repositories, extra processing will be needed to determine the codebase for the incoming change. This codebase will then be a logical name for the combination of repository and or branch etc.

The codebaseGenerator accepts a change dictionary as produced by the buildbot.db.changes.ChangesConnectorComponent, with a changeid equal to None.

Change Sources¶

A Version Control System maintains 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 learns about what Changes have occurred. For more information on VC systems and Changes, see Version Control Systems.

Changes can be provided by a variety of ChangeSource types, although any given project will typically have only a single ChangeSource active. This section provides a description of all available ChangeSource types and explains how to set up each of them.

Choosing a Change Source¶

There are a variety of ChangeSource classes available, some of which are meant to be used in conjunction with other tools to deliver Change events from the VC repository to the buildmaster.

As a quick guide, here is a list of VC systems and the ChangeSources that might be useful with them. Note that some of these modules are in Buildbot's "contrib" directory, meaning that they have been offered by other users in hopes they may be useful, and might require some additional work to make them functional.

CVS

CVSMaildirSource (watching mail sent by contrib/buildbot_cvs_mail.py script)
PBChangeSource (listening for connections from buildbot sendchange run in a loginfo script)
PBChangeSource (listening for connections from a long-running contrib/viewcvspoll.py polling process which examines the ViewCVS database directly)
Change Hooks in WebStatus

SVN

PBChangeSource (listening for connections from contrib/svn_buildbot.py run in a postcommit script)
PBChangeSource (listening for connections from a long-running contrib/svn_watcher.py or contrib/svnpoller.py polling process
SVNCommitEmailMaildirSource (watching for email sent by commit-email.pl)
SVNPoller (polling the SVN repository)
Change Hooks in WebStatus
GoogleCodeAtomPoller (polling the commit feed for a GoogleCode Git repository)

Darcs

PBChangeSource (listening for connections from contrib/darcs_buildbot.py in a commit script)
Change Hooks in WebStatus

Mercurial

PBChangeSource (listening for connections from contrib/hg_buildbot.py run in an 'changegroup' hook)
Change Hooks in WebStatus
PBChangeSource (listening for connections from buildbot/changes/hgbuildbot.py run as an in-process 'changegroup' hook)
HgPoller (polling a remote Mercurial repository)
GoogleCodeAtomPoller (polling the commit feed for a GoogleCode Git repository)

Bzr (the newer Bazaar)

PBChangeSource (listening for connections from contrib/bzr_buildbot.py run in a post-change-branch-tip or commit hook)
BzrPoller (polling the Bzr repository)
Change Hooks in WebStatus

Git

PBChangeSource (listening for connections from contrib/git_buildbot.py run in the post-receive hook)
PBChangeSource (listening for connections from contrib/github_buildbot.py, which listens for notifications from GitHub)
Change Hooks in WebStatus
GitHub change hook (specifically designed for GitHub notifications, but requiring a publicly-accessible WebStatus)
GitPoller (polling a remote Git repository)
GoogleCodeAtomPoller (polling the commit feed for a GoogleCode Git repository)

Repo/Git

GerritChangeSource connects to Gerrit via SSH to get a live stream of changes

Monotone

PBChangeSource (listening for connections from monotone-buildbot.lua, which is available with Monotone)

All VC systems can be driven by a PBChangeSource and the buildbot sendchange tool run from some form of commit script. If you write an email parsing function, they can also all be driven by a suitable mail-parsing source. Additionally, handlers for web-based notification (i.e. from GitHub) can be used with WebStatus' change_hook module. The interface is simple, so adding your own handlers (and sharing!) should be a breeze.

See Change Source Index for a full list of change sources.

Configuring Change Sources¶

The change_source configuration key holds all active change sources for the configuration.

Most configurations have a single ChangeSource, watching only a single tree, e.g.,

c['change_source'] = PBChangeSource()

For more advanced configurations, the parameter can be a list of change sources:

source1 = ...
source2 = ...
c['change_source'] = [ source1, source1 ]

Repository and Project¶

ChangeSources will, in general, automatically provide the proper repository attribute for any changes they produce. For systems which operate on URL-like specifiers, this is a repository URL. Other ChangeSources adapt the concept as necessary.

Many ChangeSources allow you to specify a project, as well. This attribute is useful when building from several distinct codebases in the same buildmaster: the project string can serve to differentiate the different codebases. Schedulers can filter on project, so you can configure different builders to run for each project.

Mail-parsing ChangeSources¶

Many projects publish information about changes to their source tree by sending an email message out to a mailing list, frequently named PROJECT-commits or PROJECT-changes. Each message usually contains a description of the change (who made the change, which files were affected) and sometimes a copy of the diff. Humans can subscribe to this list to stay informed about what's happening to the source tree.

The Buildbot can also be subscribed to a -commits mailing list, and can trigger builds in response to Changes that it hears about. The buildmaster admin needs to arrange for these email messages to arrive in a place where the buildmaster can find them, and configure the buildmaster to parse the messages correctly. Once that is in place, the email parser will create Change objects and deliver them to the Schedulers (see Schedulers) just like any other ChangeSource.

There are two components to setting up an email-based ChangeSource. The first is to route the email messages to the buildmaster, which is done by dropping them into a maildir. The second is to actually parse the messages, which is highly dependent upon the tool that was used to create them. Each VC system has a collection of favorite change-emailing tools, and each has a slightly different format, so each has a different parsing function. There is a separate ChangeSource variant for each parsing function.

Once you've chosen a maildir location and a parsing function, create the change source and put it in change_source

from buildbot.changes.mail import CVSMaildirSource
c['change_source'] = CVSMaildirSource("~/maildir-buildbot",
                                        prefix="/trunk/")

Subscribing the Buildmaster¶

The recommended way to install the buildbot is to create a dedicated account for the buildmaster. If you do this, the account will probably have a distinct email address (perhaps buildmaster@example.org). Then just arrange for this account's email to be delivered to a suitable maildir (described in the next section).

If the buildbot does not have its own account, extension addresses can be used to distinguish between email intended for the buildmaster and email intended for the rest of the account. In most modern MTAs, the e.g. foo@example.org account has control over every email address at example.org which begins with "foo", such that email addressed to account-foo@example.org can be delivered to a different destination than account-bar@example.org. qmail does this by using separate .qmail files for the two destinations (.qmail-foo and .qmail-bar, with .qmail controlling the base address and .qmail-default controlling all other extensions). Other MTAs have similar mechanisms.

Thus you can assign an extension address like foo-buildmaster@example.org to the buildmaster, and retain foo@example.org for your own use.

Using Maildirs¶

A maildir is a simple directory structure originally developed for qmail that allows safe atomic update without locking. Create a base directory with three subdirectories: new, tmp, and cur. When messages arrive, they are put into a uniquely-named file (using pids, timestamps, and random numbers) in tmp. When the file is complete, it is atomically renamed into new. Eventually the buildmaster notices the file in new, reads and parses the contents, then moves it into cur. A cronjob can be used to delete files in cur at leisure.

Maildirs are frequently created with the maildirmake tool, but a simple mkdir -p ~/MAILDIR/{cur,new,tmp} is pretty much equivalent.

Many modern MTAs can deliver directly to maildirs. The usual .forward or .procmailrc syntax is to name the base directory with a trailing slash, so something like ~/MAILDIR/. qmail and postfix are maildir-capable MTAs, and procmail is a maildir-capable MDA (Mail Delivery Agent).

Here is an example procmail config, located in ~/.procmailrc:

# .procmailrc
# routes incoming mail to appropriate mailboxes
PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail
LOGFILE=.procmail_log
SHELL=/bin/sh

:0
*
new

If procmail is not setup on a system wide basis, then the following one-line .forward file will invoke it.

!/usr/bin/procmail

For MTAs which cannot put files into maildirs directly, the safecat tool can be executed from a .forward file to accomplish the same thing.

The Buildmaster uses the linux DNotify facility to receive immediate notification when the maildir's new directory has changed. When this facility is not available, it polls the directory for new messages, every 10 seconds by default.

Parsing Email Change Messages¶

The second component to setting up an email-based ChangeSource is to parse the actual notices. This is highly dependent upon the VC system and commit script in use.

A couple of common tools used to create these change emails, along with the buildbot tools to parse them, are:

CVS

Buildbot CVS MailNotifier: CVSMaildirSource

SVN

svnmailer: http://opensource.perlig.de/en/svnmailer/
commit-email.pl: SVNCommitEmailMaildirSource

Bzr

Launchpad: BzrLaunchpadEmailMaildirSource

Mercurial

NotifyExtension: http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/index.cgi/NotifyExtension

Git

post-receive-email: http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=blob;f=contrib/hooks/post-receive-email;hb=HEAD

The following sections describe the parsers available for each of these tools.

Most of these parsers accept a prefix= argument, which is used to limit the set of files that the buildmaster pays attention to. This is most useful for systems like CVS and SVN which put multiple projects in a single repository (or use repository names to indicate branches). Each filename that appears in the email is tested against the prefix: if the filename does not start with the prefix, the file is ignored. If the filename does start with the prefix, that prefix is stripped from the filename before any further processing is done. Thus the prefix usually ends with a slash.

CVSMaildirSource¶

class buildbot.changes.mail.CVSMaildirSource¶

This parser works with the buildbot_cvs_maildir.py script in the contrib directory.

The script sends an email containing all the files submitted in one directory. It is invoked by using the CVSROOT/loginfo facility.

The Buildbot's CVSMaildirSource knows how to parse these messages and turn them into Change objects. It takes the directory name of the maildir root. For example:

from buildbot.changes.mail import CVSMaildirSource
c['change_source'] = CVSMaildirSource("/home/buildbot/Mail")

Configuration of CVS and buildbot_cvs_mail.py¶

CVS must be configured to invoke the buildbot_cvs_mail.py script when files are checked in. This is done via the CVS loginfo configuration file.

To update this, first do:

cvs checkout CVSROOT

cd to the CVSROOT directory and edit the file loginfo, adding a line like:

SomeModule /cvsroot/CVSROOT/buildbot_cvs_mail.py --cvsroot :ext:example.com:/cvsroot -e buildbot -P SomeModule %@{sVv@}

Note

For cvs version 1.12.x, the --path %p option is required. Version 1.11.x and 1.12.x report the directory path differently.

The above example you put the buildbot_cvs_mail.py script under /cvsroot/CVSROOT. It can be anywhere. Run the script with --help to see all the options. At the very least, the options -e (email) and -P (project) should be specified. The line must end with %{sVv} This is expanded to the files that were modified.

Additional entries can be added to support more modules.

See buildbot_cvs_mail.py --help` for more information on the available options.

SVNCommitEmailMaildirSource¶

class buildbot.changes.mail.SVNCommitEmailMaildirSource¶

SVNCommitEmailMaildirSource parses message sent out by the commit-email.pl script, which is included in the Subversion distribution.

It does not currently handle branches: all of the Change objects that it creates will be associated with the default (i.e. trunk) branch.

from buildbot.changes.mail import SVNCommitEmailMaildirSource
c['change_source'] = SVNCommitEmailMaildirSource("~/maildir-buildbot")

BzrLaunchpadEmailMaildirSource¶

class buildbot.changes.mail.BzrLaunchpadEmailMaildirSource¶

BzrLaunchpadEmailMaildirSource parses the mails that are sent to addresses that subscribe to branch revision notifications for a bzr branch hosted on Launchpad.

The branch name defaults to lp:Launchpad path. For example lp:~maria-captains/maria/5.1.

If only a single branch is used, the default branch name can be changed by setting defaultBranch.

For multiple branches, pass a dictionary as the value of the branchMap option to map specific repository paths to specific branch names (see example below). The leading lp: prefix of the path is optional.

The prefix option is not supported (it is silently ignored). Use the branchMap and defaultBranch instead to assign changes to branches (and just do not subscribe the buildbot to branches that are not of interest).

The revision number is obtained from the email text. The bzr revision id is not available in the mails sent by Launchpad. However, it is possible to set the bzr append_revisions_only option for public shared repositories to avoid new pushes of merges changing the meaning of old revision numbers.

from buildbot.changes.mail import BzrLaunchpadEmailMaildirSource
bm = { 'lp:~maria-captains/maria/5.1' : '5.1', 'lp:~maria-captains/maria/6.0' : '6.0' }
c['change_source'] = BzrLaunchpadEmailMaildirSource("~/maildir-buildbot", branchMap = bm)

PBChangeSource¶

class buildbot.changes.pb.PBChangeSource¶

PBChangeSource actually listens on a TCP port for clients to connect and push change notices into the Buildmaster. This is used by the built-in buildbot sendchange notification tool, as well as several version-control hook scripts. This change 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 an email .forward file. This ChangeSource always runs on the same TCP port as the slaves. It shares the same protocol, and in fact shares the same space of "usernames", so you cannot configure a PBChangeSource with the same name as a slave.

If you have a publicly accessible slave port, and are using PBChangeSource, you must establish a secure username and password for the change source. If your sendchange credentials are known (e.g., the defaults), then your buildmaster is susceptible to injection of arbitrary changes, which (depending on the build factories) could lead to arbitrary code execution on buildslaves.

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.

user

The user account that the client program must use to connect. Defaults to change

passwd

The password for the connection - defaults to changepw. Do not use this default on a publicly exposed port!

prefix

The prefix to be found and stripped from filenames delivered over the connection, defaulting to None. Any filenames which do not start with this prefix will be removed. If all the filenames in a given Change are removed, the that whole Change will be dropped. This string should probably end with a directory separator.

This is useful for changes coming from version control systems that represent branches as parent directories within the repository (like SVN and Perforce). Use a prefix of trunk/ or project/branches/foobranch/ to only follow one branch and to get correct tree-relative filenames. Without a prefix, the PBChangeSource will probably deliver Changes with filenames like trunk/foo.c instead of just foo.c. Of course this also depends upon the tool sending the Changes in (like buildbot sendchange) and what filenames it is delivering: that tool may be filtering and stripping prefixes at the sending end.

For example:

from buildbot.changes import pb
c['change_source'] = pb.PBChangeSource(port=9999, user='laura', passwd='fpga')

The following hooks are useful for sending changes to a PBChangeSource:

Mercurial Hook¶

Since Mercurial is written in Python, the hook script can invoke Buildbot's sendchange function directly, rather than having to spawn an external process. This function delivers the same sort of changes as buildbot sendchange and the various hook scripts in contrib/, so you'll need to add a PBChangeSource to your buildmaster to receive these changes.

To set this up, first choose a Mercurial repository that represents your central official source tree. This will be the same repository that your buildslaves will eventually pull from. Install Buildbot on the machine that hosts this repository, using the same version of Python as Mercurial is using (so that the Mercurial hook can import code from buildbot). Then add the following to the .hg/hgrc file in that repository, replacing the buildmaster hostname/portnumber as appropriate for your buildbot:

[hooks]
changegroup.buildbot = python:buildbot.changes.hgbuildbot.hook

[hgbuildbot]
master = buildmaster.example.org:9987
# .. other hgbuildbot parameters ..

The master configuration key allows to have more than one buildmaster specification. The buildmasters have to be separated by a whitspace or comma (see also 'hg help config'):

master =
    buildmaster.example.org:9987
    buildmaster2.example.org:9989

Note

Mercurial lets you define multiple changegroup hooks by giving them distinct names, like changegroup.foo and changegroup.bar, which is why we use changegroup.buildbot in this example. There is nothing magical about the buildbot suffix in the hook name. The [hgbuildbot] section is special, however, as it is the only section that the buildbot hook pays attention to.)

Also note that this runs as a changegroup hook, rather than as an incoming hook. The changegroup hook is run with multiple revisions at a time (say, if multiple revisions are being pushed to this repository in a single hg push command), whereas the incoming hook is run with just one revision at a time. The hgbuildbot.hook function will only work with the changegroup hook.

Changes' attribute properties has an entry is_merge which is set to true when the change was caused by a merge.

Authentication¶

If the buildmaster PBChangeSource is configured to require sendchange credentials then you can set these with the auth parameter. When this parameter is not set it defaults to change:changepw, which are the defaults for the user and password values of a PBChangeSource which doesn't require authentication.

[hgbuildbot]
auth = clientname:supersecret
# ...

You can set this parameter in either the global /etc/mercurial/hgrc, your personal ~/.hgrc file or the repository local .hg/hgrc file. But since this value is stored in plain text, you must make sure that it can only be read by those users that need to know the authentication credentials.

Branch Type¶

The [hgbuildbot] section has two other parameters that you might specify, both of which control the name of the branch that is attached to the changes coming from this hook.

One common branch naming policy for Mercurial repositories is to use Mercurial's built-in branches (the kind created with hg branch and listed with hg branches). This feature associates persistent names with particular lines of descent within a single repository. (note that the buildbot source.Mercurial checkout step does not yet support this kind of branch). To have the commit hook deliver this sort of branch name with the Change object, use branchtype = inrepo, this is the default behavior:

[hgbuildbot]
branchtype = inrepo
# ...

Another approach is for each branch to go into a separate repository, and all the branches for a single project share a common parent directory. For example, you might have /var/repos/PROJECT/trunk/ and /var/repos/PROJECT/release. To use this style, use the branchtype = dirname setting, which simply uses the last component of the repository's enclosing directory as the branch name:

[hgbuildbot]
branchtype = dirname
# ...

Finally, if you want to simply specify the branchname directly, for all changes, use branch = BRANCHNAME. This overrides branchtype:

[hgbuildbot]
branch = trunk
# ...

If you use branch= like this, you'll need to put a separate .hgrc in each repository. If you use branchtype=, you may be able to use the same .hgrc for all your repositories, stored in ~/.hgrc or /etc/mercurial/hgrc.

Compatibility¶

As twisted needs to hook some signals, and some web servers strictly forbid that, the parameter fork in the [hgbuildbot] section will instruct Mercurial to fork before sending the change request. Then as the created process will be of short life, it is considered as safe to disable the signal restriction in the Apache setting like that WSGIRestrictSignal Off. Refer to the documentation of your web server for other way to do the same.

Resulting Changes¶

The category parameter sets the category for any changes generated from the hook. Likewise, the project parameter sets the project.

Changes' repository attributes are formed from the Mercurial repo path by stripping strip slashes on the left, then prepending the baseurl. For example, assume the following parameters:

[hgbuildbot]
baseurl = http://hg.myorg.com/repos/
strip = 3
# ...

Then a repopath of /var/repos/myproject/release would have its left 3 slashes stripped, leaving myproject/release, after which the base URL would be prepended, to create http://hg.myorg.com/repos/myproject/release.

The hgbuildbot baseurl value defaults to the value of the same parameter in the web section of the configuration.

Note

older versions of Buildbot created repository strings that did not contain an entire URL. To continue this pattern, set the hgbuildbot baseurl parameter to an empty string:

[hgbuildbot]
baseurl = http://hg.myorg.com/repos/

Bzr Hook¶

Bzr is also written in Python, and the Bzr hook depends on Twisted to send the changes.

To install, put contrib/bzr_buildbot.py in one of your plugins locations a bzr plugins directory (e.g., ~/.bazaar/plugins). Then, in one of your bazaar conf files (e.g., ~/.bazaar/locations.conf), set the location you want to connect with buildbot with these keys:

buildbot_on one of 'commit', 'push, or 'change'. Turns the plugin on to report changes via commit, changes via push, or any changes to the trunk. 'change' is recommended.

buildbot_server (required to send to a buildbot master) the URL of the buildbot master to which you will connect (as of this writing, the same server and port to which slaves connect).

buildbot_port (optional, defaults to 9989) the port of the buildbot master to which you will connect (as of this writing, the same server and port to which slaves connect)

buildbot_pqm (optional, defaults to not pqm) Normally, the user that commits the revision is the user that is responsible for the change. When run in a pqm (Patch Queue Manager, see https://launchpad.net/pqm) environment, the user that commits is the Patch Queue Manager, and the user that committed the parent revision is responsible for the change. To turn on the pqm mode, set this value to any of (case-insensitive) "Yes", "Y", "True", or "T".

buildbot_dry_run (optional, defaults to not a dry run) Normally, the post-commit hook will attempt to communicate with the configured buildbot server and port. If this parameter is included and any of (case-insensitive) "Yes", "Y", "True", or "T", then the hook will simply print what it would have sent, but not attempt to contact the buildbot master.

buildbot_send_branch_name (optional, defaults to not sending the branch name) If your buildbot's bzr source build step uses a repourl, do not turn this on. If your buildbot's bzr build step uses a baseURL, then you may set this value to any of (case-insensitive) "Yes", "Y", "True", or "T" to have the buildbot master append the branch name to the baseURL.

Note

The bzr smart server (as of version 2.2.2) doesn't know how to resolve bzr:// urls into absolute paths so any paths in locations.conf won't match, hence no change notifications will be sent to Buildbot. Setting configuration parameters globally or in-branch might still work. When buildbot no longer has a hardcoded password, it will be a configuration option here as well.

Here's a simple example that you might have in your ~/.bazaar/locations.conf.

[chroot-*:///var/local/myrepo/mybranch]
buildbot_on = change
buildbot_server = localhost

P4Source¶

The P4Source periodically polls a Perforce depot for changes. It accepts the following arguments:

p4base: The base depot path to watch, without the trailing '/...'.
p4port: The Perforce server to connect to (as host:port).
p4user: The Perforce user.
p4passwd: The Perforce password.
p4bin: An optional string parameter. Specify the location of the perforce command line binary (p4). You only need to do this if the perforce binary is not in the path of the buildbot user. Defaults to p4.
split_file: A function that maps a pathname, without the leading p4base, to a (branch, filename) tuple. The default just returns (None, branchfile), which effectively disables branch support. You should supply a function which understands your repository structure.
pollInterval: How often to poll, in seconds. Defaults to 600 (10 minutes).
histmax: The maximum number of changes to inspect at a time. If more than this number occur since the last poll, older changes will be silently ignored.
encoding: The character encoding of p4's output. This defaults to "utf8", but if your commit messages are in another encoding, specify that here.

Example¶

This configuration uses the P4PORT, P4USER, and P4PASSWD specified in the buildmaster's environment. It watches a project in which the branch name is simply the next path component, and the file is all path components after.

from buildbot.changes import p4poller
s = p4poller.P4Source(p4base='//depot/project/',
                      split_file=lambda branchfile: branchfile.split('/',1),
                     )
c['change_source'] = s

BonsaiPoller¶

The BonsaiPoller periodically polls a Bonsai server. This is a CGI script accessed through a web server that provides information about a CVS tree, for example the Mozilla bonsai server at http://bonsai.mozilla.org. Bonsai servers are usable by both humans and machines. In this case, the buildbot's change source forms a query which asks about any files in the specified branch which have changed since the last query.

BonsaiPoller accepts the following arguments:

bonsaiURL: The base URL of the Bonsai server, e.g., http://bonsai.mozilla.org
module: The module to look for changes in. Commonly this is all.
branch: The branch to look for changes in. This will appear in the branch field of the resulting change objects.
tree: The tree to look for changes in. Commonly this is all.
cvsroot: The CVS root of the repository. Usually this is /cvsroot.
pollInterval: The time (in seconds) between queries for changes.
project: The project name to attach to all change objects produced by this change source.

SVNPoller¶

class buildbot.changes.svnpoller.SVNPoller¶

The SVNPoller is a ChangeSource which periodically polls a Subversion repository for new revisions, by running the svn log command in a subshell. It can watch a single branch or multiple branches.

SVNPoller accepts the following arguments:

svnurl

The base URL path to watch, like svn://svn.twistedmatrix.com/svn/Twisted/trunk, or http://divmod.org/svn/Divmo/, or even file:///home/svn/Repository/ProjectA/branches/1.5/. This must include the access scheme, the location of the repository (both the hostname for remote ones, and any additional directory names necessary to get to the repository), and the sub-path within the repository's virtual filesystem for the project and branch of interest.

The SVNPoller will only pay attention to files inside the subdirectory specified by the complete svnurl.

split_file

A function to convert pathnames into (branch, relative_pathname) tuples. Use this to explain your repository's branch-naming policy to SVNPoller. This function must accept a single string (the pathname relative to the repository) and return a two-entry tuple. Directory pathnames always end with a right slash to distinguish them from files, like trunk/src/, or src/. There are a few utility functions in buildbot.changes.svnpoller that can be used as a split_file function; see below for details.

For directories, the relative pathname returned by split_file should end with a right slash but an empty string is also accepted for the root, like ("branches/1.5.x", "") being converted from "branches/1.5.x/".

The default value always returns (None, path), which indicates that all files are on the trunk.

Subclasses of SVNPoller can override the split_file method instead of using the split_file= argument.

project

Set the name of the project to be used for the SVNPoller. This will then be set in any changes generated by the SVNPoller, and can be used in a Change Filter for triggering particular builders.

svnuser

An optional string parameter. If set, the --user argument will be added to all svn commands. Use this if you have to authenticate to the svn server before you can do svn info or svn log commands.

svnpasswd

Like svnuser, this will cause a --password argument to be passed to all svn commands.

pollInterval

How often to poll, in seconds. Defaults to 600 (checking once every 10 minutes). Lower this if you want the buildbot to notice changes faster, raise it if you want to reduce the network and CPU load on your svn server. Please be considerate of public SVN repositories by using a large interval when polling them.

histmax

The maximum number of changes to inspect at a time. Every pollInterval seconds, the SVNPoller asks for the last histmax changes and looks through them for any revisions it does not already know about. If more than histmax revisions have been committed since the last poll, older changes will be silently ignored. Larger values of histmax will cause more time and memory to be consumed on each poll attempt. histmax defaults to 100.

svnbin

This controls the svn executable to use. If subversion is installed in a weird place on your system (outside of the buildmaster's PATH), use this to tell SVNPoller where to find it. The default value of svn will almost always be sufficient.

revlinktmpl

This parameter is deprecated in favour of specifying a global revlink option. This parameter allows a link to be provided for each revision (for example, to websvn or viewvc). These links appear anywhere changes are shown, such as on build or change pages. The proper form for this parameter is an URL with the portion that will substitute for a revision number replaced by ''%s''. For example, 'http://myserver/websvn/revision.php?rev=%s' could be used to cause revision links to be created to a websvn repository viewer.

cachepath

If specified, this is a pathname of a cache file that SVNPoller will use to store its state between restarts of the master.

extra_args

If specified, the extra arguments will be added to the svn command args.

Several split file functions are available for common SVN repository layouts. For a poller that is only monitoring trunk, the default split file function is available explicitly as split_file_alwaystrunk:

from buildbot.changes.svnpoller import SVNPoller
from buildbot.changes.svnpoller import split_file_alwaystrunk
c['change_source'] = SVNPoller(
    svnurl="svn://svn.twistedmatrix.com/svn/Twisted/trunk",
    split_file=split_file_alwaystrunk)

For repositories with the /trunk and /branches/{BRANCH} layout, split_file_branches will do the job:

from buildbot.changes.svnpoller import SVNPoller
from buildbot.changes.svnpoller import split_file_branches
c['change_source'] = SVNPoller(
    svnurl="https://amanda.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/amanda/amanda",
    split_file=split_file_branches)

When using this splitter the poller will set the project attribute of any changes to the project attribute of the poller.

For repositories with the {PROJECT}/trunk and {PROJECT}/branches/{BRANCH} layout, split_file_projects_branches will do the job:

from buildbot.changes.svnpoller import SVNPoller
from buildbot.changes.svnpoller import split_file_projects_branches
c['change_source'] = SVNPoller(
    svnurl="https://amanda.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/amanda/",
    split_file=split_file_projects_branches)

When using this splitter the poller will set the project attribute of any changes to the project determined by the splitter.

The SVNPoller is highly adaptable to various Subversion layouts. See Customizing SVNPoller for details and some common scenarios.

Bzr Poller¶

If you cannot insert a Bzr hook in the server, you can use the Bzr Poller. To use, put contrib/bzr_buildbot.py somewhere that your buildbot configuration can import it. Even putting it in the same directory as the master.cfg should work. Install the poller in the buildbot configuration as with any other change source. Minimally, provide a URL that you want to poll (bzr://, bzr+ssh://, or lp:), making sure the buildbot user has necessary privileges.

# bzr_buildbot.py in the same directory as master.cfg
from bzr_buildbot import BzrPoller
c['change_source'] = BzrPoller(
    url='bzr://hostname/my_project',
    poll_interval=300)

The BzrPoller parameters are:

url: The URL to poll.
poll_interval: The number of seconds to wait between polls. Defaults to 10 minutes.
branch_name: Any value to be used as the branch name. Defaults to None, or specify a string, or specify the constants from bzr_buildbot.py SHORT or FULL to get the short branch name or full branch address.
blame_merge_author: normally, the user that commits the revision is the user that is responsible for the change. When run in a pqm (Patch Queue Manager, see https://launchpad.net/pqm) environment, the user that commits is the Patch Queue Manager, and the user that committed the merged, parent revision is responsible for the change. set this value to True if this is pointed against a PQM-managed branch.

GitPoller¶

If you cannot take advantage of post-receive hooks as provided by contrib/git_buildbot.py for example, then you can use the GitPoller.

The GitPoller periodically fetches from a remote Git repository and processes any changes. It requires its own working directory for operation. The default should be adequate, but it can be overridden via the workdir property.

Note

There can only be a single GitPoller pointed at any given repository.

The GitPoller requires Git-1.7 and later. It accepts the following arguments:

repourl: the git-url that describes the remote repository, e.g. git@example.com:foobaz/myrepo.git (see the git fetch help for more info on git-url formats)
branches: a list of the branches to fetch, will default to ['master']
branch: accepts a single branch name to fetch. Exists for backwards compatibility with old configurations.
pollInterval: interval in seconds between polls, default is 10 minutes
gitbin: path to the Git binary, defaults to just 'git'
category: Set the category to be used for the changes produced by the GitPoller. This will then be set in any changes generated by the GitPoller, and can be used in a Change Filter for triggering particular builders.
project: Set the name of the project to be used for the GitPoller. This will then be set in any changes generated by the GitPoller, and can be used in a Change Filter for triggering particular builders.
usetimestamps: parse each revision's commit timestamp (default is True), or ignore it in favor of the current time (so recently processed commits appear together in the waterfall page)
encoding: Set encoding will be used to parse author's name and commit message. Default encoding is 'utf-8'. This will not be applied to file names since Git will translate non-ascii file names to unreadable escape sequences.
workdir: the directory where the poller should keep its local repository. The default is gitpoller_work. If this is a relative path, it will be interpreted relative to the master's basedir. Multiple Git pollers can share the same directory.

A configuration for the Git poller might look like this:

from buildbot.changes.gitpoller import GitPoller
c['change_source'] = GitPoller(repourl='git@example.com:foobaz/myrepo.git',
                               branches=['master', 'great_new_feature'])

HgPoller¶

If you cannot take advantage of post-receive hooks as provided by buildbot/changes/hgbuildbot.py for example, then you can use the HgPoller.

The HgPoller periodically pulls a named branch from a remote Mercurial repository and processes any changes. It requires its own working directory for operation, which must be specified via the workdir property.

The HgPoller requires a working hg executable, and at least a read-only access to the repository it polls (possibly through ssh keys or by tweaking the hgrc of the system user buildbot runs as).

The HgPoller will not transmit any change if there are several heads on the watched named branch. This is similar (although not identical) to the Mercurial executable behaviour. This exceptional condition is usually the result of a developer mistake, and usually does not last for long. It is reported in logs. If fixed by a later merge, the buildmaster administrator does not have anything to do: that merge will be transmitted, together with the intermediate ones.

The HgPoller accepts the following arguments:

repourl

the url that describes the remote repository, e.g. http://hg.example.com/projects/myrepo. Any url suitable for hg pull can be specified.

branch

the desired branch to pull, will default to 'default'

workdir

the directory where the poller should keep its local repository. It is mandatory for now, although later releases may provide a meaningful default.

It also serves to identify the poller in the buildmaster internal database. Changing it may result in re-processing all changes so far.

Several HgPoller instances may share the same workdir for mutualisation of the common history between two different branches, thus easing on local and remote system resources and bandwidth.

If relative, the workdir will be interpreted from the master directory.

pollInterval

interval in seconds between polls, default is 10 minutes

hgbin

path to the Mercurial binary, defaults to just 'hg'

category

Set the category to be used for the changes produced by the HgPoller. This will then be set in any changes generated by the HgPoller, and can be used in a Change Filter for triggering particular builders.

project

Set the name of the project to be used for the HgPoller. This will then be set in any changes generated by the HgPoller, and can be used in a Change Filter for triggering particular builders.

usetimestamps

parse each revision's commit timestamp (default is True), or ignore it in favor of the current time (so recently processed commits appear together in the waterfall page)

encoding

Set encoding will be used to parse author's name and commit message. Default encoding is 'utf-8'.

A configuration for the Mercurial poller might look like this:

from buildbot.changes.hgpoller import HgPoller
c['change_source'] = HgPoller(repourl='http://hg.example.org/projects/myrepo',
                               branch='great_new_feature',
                               workdir='hg-myrepo')

GerritChangeSource¶

class buildbot.changes.gerritchangesource.GerritChangeSource¶

The GerritChangeSource class connects to a Gerrit server by its SSH interface and uses its event source mechanism, gerrit stream-events.

This class adds a change to the buildbot system for each of the following events:

patchset-created: A change is proposed for review. Automatic checks like checkpatch.pl can be automatically triggered. Beware of what kind of automatic task you trigger. At this point, no trusted human has reviewed the code, and a patch could be specially crafted by an attacker to compromise your buildslaves.
ref-updated: A change has been merged into the repository. Typically, this kind of event can lead to a complete rebuild of the project, and upload binaries to an incremental build results server.

This class will populate the property list of the triggered build with the info received from Gerrit server in JSON format.

In case of patchset-created event, these properties will be:

event.change.branch: Branch of the Change
event.change.id: Change's ID in the Gerrit system (the ChangeId: in commit comments)
event.change.number: Change's number in Gerrit system
event.change.owner.email: Change's owner email (owner is first uploader)
event.change.owner.name: Change's owner name
event.change.project: Project of the Change
event.change.subject: Change's subject
event.change.url: URL of the Change in the Gerrit's web interface
event.patchSet.number: Patchset's version number
event.patchSet.ref: Patchset's Gerrit "virtual branch"
event.patchSet.revision: Patchset's Git commit ID
event.patchSet.uploader.email: Patchset uploader's email (owner is first uploader)
event.patchSet.uploader.name: Patchset uploader's name (owner is first uploader)
event.type: Event type (patchset-created)
event.uploader.email: Patchset uploader's email
event.uploader.name: Patchset uploader's name

In case of ref-updated event, these properties will be:

event.refUpdate.newRev: New Git commit ID (after merger)
event.refUpdate.oldRev: Previous Git commit ID (before merger)
event.refUpdate.project: Project that was updated
event.refUpdate.refName: Branch that was updated
event.submitter.email: Submitter's email (merger responsible)
event.submitter.name: Submitter's name (merger responsible)
event.type: Event type (ref-updated)
event.submitter.email: Submitter's email (merger responsible)
event.submitter.name: Submitter's name (merger responsible)

A configuration for this source might look like:

from buildbot.changes.gerritchangesource import GerritChangeSource
c['change_source'] = GerritChangeSource(gerrit_server, gerrit_user)

see master/docs/examples/repo_gerrit.cfg in the Buildbot distribution for a full example setup of GerritChangeSource.

Change Hooks (HTTP Notifications)¶

Buildbot already provides a web frontend, and that frontend can easily be used to receive HTTP push notifications of commits from services like GitHub or GoogleCode. See Change Hooks for more information.

GoogleCodeAtomPoller¶

The GoogleCodeAtomPoller periodically polls a Google Code Project's commit feed for changes. Works on SVN, Git, and Mercurial repositories. Branches are not understood (yet). It accepts the following arguments:

feedurl: The commit Atom feed URL of the GoogleCode repository (MANDATORY)
pollinterval: Polling frequency for the feed (in seconds). Default is 1 hour (OPTIONAL)

As an example, to poll the Ostinato project's commit feed every 3 hours, the configuration would look like this:

from googlecode_atom import GoogleCodeAtomPoller
c['change_source'] = GoogleCodeAtomPoller(
    feedurl="http://code.google.com/feeds/p/ostinato/hgchanges/basic",
    pollinterval=10800)

(note that you will need to download googlecode_atom.py from the Buildbot source and install it somewhere on your PYTHONPATH first)

Schedulers¶

Schedulers are responsible for initiating builds on builders.

Some schedulers listen for changes from ChangeSources and generate build sets in response to these changes. Others generate build sets without changes, based on other events in the buildmaster.

Configuring Schedulers¶

The schedulers configuration parameter gives a list of Scheduler instances, each of which causes builds to be started on a particular set of Builders. The two basic Scheduler classes you are likely to start with are SingleBranchScheduler and Periodic, but you can write a customized subclass to implement more complicated build scheduling.

Scheduler arguments should always be specified by name (as keyword arguments), to allow for future expansion:

sched = SingleBranchScheduler(name="quick", builderNames=['lin', 'win'])

There are several common arguments for schedulers, although not all are available with all schedulers.

name: Each Scheduler must have a unique name. This is used in status displays, and is also available in the build property scheduler.
builderNames: This is the set of builders which this scheduler should trigger, specified as a list of names (strings).

properties

This is a dictionary specifying properties that will be transmitted to all builds started by this scheduler. The owner property may be of particular interest, as its contents (as a list) will be added to the list of "interested users" (Doing Things With Users) for each triggered build. For example

sched = Scheduler(...,
    properties = { 'owner' : [ 'zorro@company.com', 'silver@company.com' ] })

fileIsImportant

A callable which takes one argument, a Change instance, and returns True if the change is worth building, and False if it is not. Unimportant Changes are accumulated until the build is triggered by an important change. The default value of None means that all Changes are important.

change_filter

The change filter that will determine which changes are recognized by this scheduler; Change Filters. Note that this is different from fileIsImportant: if the change filter filters out a Change, then it is completely ignored by the scheduler. If a Change is allowed by the change filter, but is deemed unimportant, then it will not cause builds to start, but will be remembered and shown in status displays.

codebases

When the scheduler processes data from more than 1 repository at the same time then a corresponding codebase definition should be passed for each repository. A codebase definition is a dictionary with one or more of the following keys: repository, branch, revision. The codebase definitions have also to be passed as dictionary.

codebases = {'codebase1': {'repository':'....',
                           'branch':'default',
                           'revision': None},
             'codebase2': {'repository':'....'} }

Important

codebases behaves also like a change_filter on codebase. The scheduler will only process changes when their codebases are found in codebases. By default codebases is set to {'':{}} which means that only changes with codebase '' (default value for codebase) will be accepted by the scheduler.

Buildsteps can have a reference to one of the codebases. The step will only get information (revision, branch etc.) that is related to that codebase. When a scheduler is triggered by new changes, these changes (having a codebase) will be incorporated by the new build. The buildsteps referencing to the codebases that have changes get information about those changes. The buildstep that references to a codebase that does not have changes in the build get the information from the codebases definition as configured in the scheduler.

onlyImportant

A boolean that, when True, only adds important changes to the buildset as specified in the fileIsImportant callable. This means that unimportant changes are ignored the same way a change_filter filters changes. This defaults to False and only applies when fileIsImportant is given.

The remaining subsections represent a catalog of the available Scheduler types. All these Schedulers are defined in modules under buildbot.schedulers, and the docstrings there are the best source of documentation on the arguments taken by each one.

Change Filters¶

Several schedulers perform filtering on an incoming set of changes. The filter can most generically be specified as a ChangeFilter. Set up a ChangeFilter like this:

from buildbot.changes.filter import ChangeFilter
my_filter = ChangeFilter(
    project_re="^baseproduct/.*",
    branch="devel")

and then add it to a scheduler with the change_filter parameter:

sch = SomeSchedulerClass(...,
    change_filter=my_filter)

There are five attributes of changes on which you can filter:

project: the project string, as defined by the ChangeSource.
repository: the repository in which this change occurred.
branch: the branch on which this change occurred. Note that 'trunk' or 'master' is often denoted by None.
category: the category, again as defined by the ChangeSource.
codebase: the change's codebase.

For each attribute, the filter can look for a single, specific value:

my_filter = ChangeFilter(project = 'myproject')

or accept any of a set of values:

my_filter = ChangeFilter(project = ['myproject', 'jimsproject'])

or apply a regular expression, using the attribute name with a "_re" suffix:

my_filter = ChangeFilter(category_re = '.*deve.*')
# or, to use regular expression flags:
import re
my_filter = ChangeFilter(category_re = re.compile('.*deve.*', re.I))

For anything more complicated, define a Python function to recognize the strings you want:

def my_branch_fn(branch):
    return branch in branches_to_build and branch not in branches_to_ignore
my_filter = ChangeFilter(branch_fn = my_branch_fn)

The special argument filter_fn can be used to specify a function that is given the entire Change object, and returns a boolean.

The entire set of allowed arguments, then, is

project	project_re	project_fn
repository	repository_re	repository_fn
branch	branch_re	branch_fn
category	category_re	category_fn
codebase	codebase_re	codebase_fn
filter_fn

A Change passes the filter only if all arguments are satisfied. If no filter object is given to a scheduler, then all changes will be built (subject to any other restrictions the scheduler enforces).

SingleBranchScheduler¶

This is the original and still most popular scheduler class. It follows exactly one branch, and starts a configurable tree-stable-timer after each change on that branch. When the timer expires, it starts a build on some set of Builders. The Scheduler accepts a fileIsImportant function which can be used to ignore some Changes if they do not affect any important files.

If treeStableTimer is not set, then this scheduler starts a build for every Change that matches its change_filter and statsfies fileIsImportant. If treeStableTimer is set, then a build is triggered for each set of Changes which arrive within the configured time, and match the filters.

Note

The behavior of this scheduler is undefined, if treeStableTimer is set, and changes from multiple branches, repositories or codebases are accepted by the filter.

Note

The codebases argument will filter out codebases not specified there, but won't filter based on the branches specified there.

The arguments to this scheduler are:

name

builderNames

properties

fileIsImportant

change_filter

onlyImportant

See Configuring Schedulers.

treeStableTimer

The scheduler will wait for this many seconds before starting the build. If new changes are made during this interval, the timer will be restarted, so really the build will be started after a change and then after this many seconds of inactivity.

If treeStableTimer is None, then a separate build is started immediately for each Change.

fileIsImportant

categories (deprecated; use change_filter)

A list of categories of changes that this scheduler will respond to. If this is specified, then any non-matching changes are ignored.

branch (deprecated; use change_filter)

The scheduler will pay attention to this branch, ignoring Changes that occur on other branches. Setting branch equal to the special value of None means it should only pay attention to the default branch.

Note

None is a keyword, not a string, so write None and not "None".

Example:

from buildbot.schedulers.basic  import SingleBranchScheduler
from buildbot.changes import filter
quick = SingleBranchScheduler(name="quick",
                    change_filter=filter.ChangeFilter(branch='master'),
                    treeStableTimer=60,
                    builderNames=["quick-linux", "quick-netbsd"])
full = SingleBranchScheduler(name="full",
                    change_filter=filter.ChangeFilter(branch='master'),
                    treeStableTimer=5*60,
                    builderNames=["full-linux", "full-netbsd", "full-OSX"])
c['schedulers'] = [quick, full]

In this example, the two quick builders are triggered 60 seconds after the tree has been changed. The full builds do not run quite so quickly (they wait 5 minutes), so hopefully if the quick builds fail due to a missing file or really simple typo, the developer can discover and fix the problem before the full builds are started. Both Schedulers only pay attention to the default branch: any changes on other branches are ignored by these schedulers. Each scheduler triggers a different set of Builders, referenced by name.

The old names for this scheduler, buildbot.scheduler.Scheduler and buildbot.schedulers.basic.Scheduler, are deprecated in favor of the more accurate name buildbot.schedulers.basic.SingleBranchScheduler.

AnyBranchScheduler¶

This scheduler uses a tree-stable-timer like the default one, but uses a separate timer for each branch.

If treeStableTimer is not set, then this scheduler is indistinguishable from bb:sched:SingleBranchScheduler. If treeStableTimer is set, then a build is triggered for each set of Changes which arrive within the configured time, and match the filters.

The arguments to this scheduler are:

name

builderNames

properties

fileIsImportant

change_filter

onlyImportant: See Configuring Schedulers.
treeStableTimer: The scheduler will wait for this many seconds before starting the build. If new changes are made on the same branch during this interval, the timer will be restarted.
branches (deprecated; use change_filter): Changes on branches not specified on this list will be ignored.
categories (deprecated; use change_filter): A list of categories of changes that this scheduler will respond to. If this is specified, then any non-matching changes are ignored.

Dependent Scheduler¶

It is common to wind up with one kind of build which should only be performed if the same source code was successfully handled by some other kind of build first. An example might be a packaging step: you might only want to produce .deb or RPM packages from a tree that was known to compile successfully and pass all unit tests. You could put the packaging step in the same Build as the compile and testing steps, but there might be other reasons to not do this (in particular you might have several Builders worth of compiles/tests, but only wish to do the packaging once). Another example is if you want to skip the full builds after a failing quick build of the same source code. Or, if one Build creates a product (like a compiled library) that is used by some other Builder, you'd want to make sure the consuming Build is run after the producing one.

You can use Dependencies to express this relationship to the Buildbot. There is a special kind of scheduler named scheduler.Dependent that will watch an upstream scheduler for builds to complete successfully (on all of its Builders). Each time that happens, the same source code (i.e. the same SourceStamp) will be used to start a new set of builds, on a different set of Builders. This downstream scheduler doesn't pay attention to Changes at all. It only pays attention to the upstream scheduler.

If the build fails on any of the Builders in the upstream set, the downstream builds will not fire. Note that, for SourceStamps generated by a ChangeSource, the revision is None, meaning HEAD. If any changes are committed between the time the upstream scheduler begins its build and the time the dependent scheduler begins its build, then those changes will be included in the downstream build. See the Triggerable Scheduler for a more flexible dependency mechanism that can avoid this problem.

The keyword arguments to this scheduler are:

name

builderNames

properties: See Configuring Schedulers.
upstream: The upstream scheduler to watch. Note that this is an instance, not the name of the scheduler.

Example:

from buildbot.schedulers import basic
tests = basic.SingleBranchScheduler(name="just-tests",
                        treeStableTimer=5*60,
                        builderNames=["full-linux", "full-netbsd", "full-OSX"])
package = basic.Dependent(name="build-package",
                        upstream=tests, # <- no quotes!
                        builderNames=["make-tarball", "make-deb", "make-rpm"])
c['schedulers'] = [tests, package]

Periodic Scheduler¶

This simple scheduler just triggers a build every N seconds.

The arguments to this scheduler are:

name

builderNames

properties

onlyImportant

periodicBuildTimer: The time, in seconds, after which to start a build.

Example:

from buildbot.schedulers import timed
nightly = timed.Periodic(name="daily",
                builderNames=["full-solaris"],
                periodicBuildTimer=24*60*60)
c['schedulers'] = [nightly]

The scheduler in this example just runs the full solaris build once per day. Note that this scheduler only lets you control the time between builds, not the absolute time-of-day of each Build, so this could easily wind up an evening or every afternoon scheduler depending upon when it was first activated.

Nightly Scheduler¶

This is highly configurable periodic build scheduler, which triggers a build at particular times of day, week, month, or year. The configuration syntax is very similar to the well-known crontab format, in which you provide values for minute, hour, day, and month (some of which can be wildcards), and a build is triggered whenever the current time matches the given constraints. This can run a build every night, every morning, every weekend, alternate Thursdays, on your boss's birthday, etc.

Pass some subset of minute, hour, dayOfMonth, month, and dayOfWeek; each may be a single number or a list of valid values. The builds will be triggered whenever the current time matches these values. Wildcards are represented by a '*' string. All fields default to a wildcard except 'minute', so with no fields this defaults to a build every hour, on the hour. The full list of parameters is:

name

builderNames

properties

fileIsImportant

change_filter

onlyImportant

codebases: See Configuring Schedulers. Note that fileIsImportant and change_filter are only relevant if onlyIfChanged is True.
onlyIfChanged: If this is true, then builds will not be scheduled at the designated time unless the specified branch has seen an important change since the previous build.
branch: (required) The branch to build when the time comes. Remember that a value of None here means the default branch, and will not match other branches!
minute: The minute of the hour on which to start the build. This defaults to 0, meaning an hourly build.
hour: The hour of the day on which to start the build, in 24-hour notation. This defaults to *, meaning every hour.
dayOfMonth: The day of the month to start a build. This defaults to *, meaning every day.
month: The month in which to start the build, with January = 1. This defaults to *, meaning every month.
dayOfWeek: The day of the week to start a build, with Monday = 0. This defaults to *, meaning every day of the week.

For example, the following master.cfg clause will cause a build to be started every night at 3:00am:

from buildbot.schedulers import timed
c['schedulers'].append(
    timed.Nightly(name='nightly',
        branch='master',
        builderNames=['builder1', 'builder2'],
        hour=3,
        minute=0))

This scheduler will perform a build each Monday morning at 6:23am and again at 8:23am, but only if someone has committed code in the interim:

c['schedulers'].append(
    timed.Nightly(name='BeforeWork',
         branch=`default`,
         builderNames=['builder1'],
         dayOfWeek=0,
         hour=[6,8],
         minute=23,
         onlyIfChanged=True))

The following runs a build every two hours, using Python's range function:

c.schedulers.append(
    timed.Nightly(name='every2hours',
        branch=None, # default branch
        builderNames=['builder1'],
        hour=range(0, 24, 2)))

Finally, this example will run only on December 24th:

c['schedulers'].append(
    timed.Nightly(name='SleighPreflightCheck',
        branch=None, # default branch
        builderNames=['flying_circuits', 'radar'],
        month=12,
        dayOfMonth=24,
        hour=12,
        minute=0))

Try Schedulers¶

This scheduler allows developers to use the buildbot try command to trigger builds of code they have not yet committed. See try for complete details.

Two implementations are available: Try_Jobdir and Try_Userpass. The former monitors a job directory, specified by the jobdir parameter, while the latter listens for PB connections on a specific port, and authenticates against userport.

The buildmaster must have a scheduler instance in the config file's schedulers list to receive try requests. This lets the administrator control who may initiate these trial builds, which branches are eligible for trial builds, and which Builders should be used for them.

The scheduler has various means to accept build requests. All of them enforce more security than the usual buildmaster ports do. Any source code being built can be used to compromise the buildslave accounts, but in general that code must be checked out from the VC repository first, so only people with commit privileges can get control of the buildslaves. The usual force-build control channels can waste buildslave time but do not allow arbitrary commands to be executed by people who don't have those commit privileges. However, the source code patch that is provided with the trial build does not have to go through the VC system first, so it is important to make sure these builds cannot be abused by a non-committer to acquire as much control over the buildslaves as a committer has. Ideally, only developers who have commit access to the VC repository would be able to start trial builds, but unfortunately the buildmaster does not, in general, have access to VC system's user list.

As a result, the try scheduler requires a bit more configuration. There are currently two ways to set this up:

jobdir (ssh)

This approach creates a command queue directory, called the jobdir, in the buildmaster's working directory. The buildmaster admin sets the ownership and permissions of this directory to only grant write access to the desired set of developers, all of whom must have accounts on the machine. The buildbot try command creates a special file containing the source stamp information and drops it in the jobdir, just like a standard maildir. When the buildmaster notices the new file, it unpacks the information inside and starts the builds.

The config file entries used by 'buildbot try' either specify a local queuedir (for which write and mv are used) or a remote one (using scp and ssh).

The advantage of this scheme is that it is quite secure, the disadvantage is that it requires fiddling outside the buildmaster config (to set the permissions on the jobdir correctly). If the buildmaster machine happens to also house the VC repository, then it can be fairly easy to keep the VC userlist in sync with the trial-build userlist. If they are on different machines, this will be much more of a hassle. It may also involve granting developer accounts on a machine that would not otherwise require them.

To implement this, the buildslave invokes ssh -l username host buildbot tryserver ARGS, passing the patch contents over stdin. The arguments must include the inlet directory and the revision information.

user+password (PB)

In this approach, each developer gets a username/password pair, which are all listed in the buildmaster's configuration file. When the developer runs buildbot try, their machine connects to the buildmaster via PB and authenticates themselves using that username and password, then sends a PB command to start the trial build.

The advantage of this scheme is that the entire configuration is performed inside the buildmaster's config file. The disadvantages are that it is less secure (while the cred authentication system does not expose the password in plaintext over the wire, it does not offer most of the other security properties that SSH does). In addition, the buildmaster admin is responsible for maintaining the username/password list, adding and deleting entries as developers come and go.

For example, to set up the jobdir style of trial build, using a command queue directory of MASTERDIR/jobdir (and assuming that all your project developers were members of the developers unix group), you would first set up that directory:

mkdir -p MASTERDIR/jobdir MASTERDIR/jobdir/new MASTERDIR/jobdir/cur MASTERDIR/jobdir/tmp
chgrp developers MASTERDIR/jobdir MASTERDIR/jobdir/*
chmod g+rwx,o-rwx MASTERDIR/jobdir MASTERDIR/jobdir/*

and then use the following scheduler in the buildmaster's config file:

from buildbot.schedulers.trysched import Try_Jobdir
s = Try_Jobdir(name="try1",
               builderNames=["full-linux", "full-netbsd", "full-OSX"],
               jobdir="jobdir")
c['schedulers'] = [s]

Note that you must create the jobdir before telling the buildmaster to use this configuration, otherwise you will get an error. Also remember that the buildmaster must be able to read and write to the jobdir as well. Be sure to watch the twistd.log file (Logfiles) as you start using the jobdir, to make sure the buildmaster is happy with it.

Note

Patches in the jobdir are encoded using netstrings, which place an arbitrary upper limit on patch size of 99999 bytes. If your submitted try jobs are rejected with BadJobfile, try increasing this limit with a snippet like this in your master.cfg:

from twisted.protocols.basic import NetstringReceiver
NetstringReceiver.MAX_LENGTH = 1000000

To use the username/password form of authentication, create a Try_Userpass instance instead. It takes the same builderNames argument as the Try_Jobdir form, but accepts an additional port argument (to specify the TCP port to listen on) and a userpass list of username/password pairs to accept. Remember to use good passwords for this: the security of the buildslave accounts depends upon it:

from buildbot.schedulers.trysched import Try_Userpass
s = Try_Userpass(name="try2",
                 builderNames=["full-linux", "full-netbsd", "full-OSX"],
                 port=8031,
                 userpass=[("alice","pw1"), ("bob", "pw2")] )
c['schedulers'] = [s]

Like most places in the buildbot, the port argument takes a strports specification. See twisted.application.strports for details.

Triggerable Scheduler¶

The Triggerable scheduler waits to be triggered by a Trigger step (see Triggering Schedulers) in another build. That step can optionally wait for the scheduler's builds to complete. This provides two advantages over Dependent schedulers. First, the same scheduler can be triggered from multiple builds. Second, the ability to wait for a Triggerable's builds to complete provides a form of "subroutine call", where one or more builds can "call" a scheduler to perform some work for them, perhaps on other buildslaves. The Triggerable-Scheduler supports multiple codebases. The scheduler filters out all codebases from Trigger steps that are not configured in the scheduler.

The parameters are just the basics:

name

builderNames

properties

codebases: See Configuring Schedulers.

This class is only useful in conjunction with the Trigger step. Here is a fully-worked example:

from buildbot.schedulers import basic, timed, triggerable
from buildbot.process import factory
from buildbot.steps import trigger

checkin = basic.SingleBranchScheduler(name="checkin",
            branch=None,
            treeStableTimer=5*60,
            builderNames=["checkin"])
nightly = timed.Nightly(name='nightly',
            branch=None,
            builderNames=['nightly'],
            hour=3,
            minute=0)

mktarball = triggerable.Triggerable(name="mktarball",
                builderNames=["mktarball"])
build = triggerable.Triggerable(name="build-all-platforms",
                builderNames=["build-all-platforms"])
test = triggerable.Triggerable(name="distributed-test",
                builderNames=["distributed-test"])
package = triggerable.Triggerable(name="package-all-platforms",
                builderNames=["package-all-platforms"])

c['schedulers'] = [mktarball, checkin, nightly, build, test, package]

# on checkin, make a tarball, build it, and test it
checkin_factory = factory.BuildFactory()
checkin_factory.addStep(trigger.Trigger(schedulerNames=['mktarball'],
                                       waitForFinish=True))
checkin_factory.addStep(trigger.Trigger(schedulerNames=['build-all-platforms'],
                                   waitForFinish=True))
checkin_factory.addStep(trigger.Trigger(schedulerNames=['distributed-test'],
                                  waitForFinish=True))

# and every night, make a tarball, build it, and package it
nightly_factory = factory.BuildFactory()
nightly_factory.addStep(trigger.Trigger(schedulerNames=['mktarball'],
                                       waitForFinish=True))
nightly_factory.addStep(trigger.Trigger(schedulerNames=['build-all-platforms'],
                                   waitForFinish=True))
nightly_factory.addStep(trigger.Trigger(schedulerNames=['package-all-platforms'],
                                     waitForFinish=True))

NightlyTriggerable Scheduler¶

class buildbot.schedulers.timed.NightlyTriggerable¶

The NightlyTriggerable scheduler is a mix of the Nightly and Triggerable schedulers. This scheduler triggers builds at a particular time of day, week, or year, exactly as the Nightly scheduler. However, the source stamp set that is used that provided by the last Trigger step that targeted this scheduler.

The parameters are just the basics:

name

builderNames

properties

codebases: See Configuring Schedulers.

minute

hour

dayOfMonth

month

dayOfWeek: See Nightly.

This class is only useful in conjunction with the Trigger step. Note that waitForFinish is ignored by Trigger steps targeting this scheduler.

Here is a fully-worked example:

from buildbot.schedulers import basic, timed
from buildbot.process import factory
from buildbot.steps import shell, trigger

checkin = basic.SingleBranchScheduler(name="checkin",
            branch=None,
            treeStableTimer=5*60,
            builderNames=["checkin"])
nightly = timed.NightlyTriggerable(name='nightly',
            builderNames=['nightly'],
            hour=3,
            minute=0)

c['schedulers'] = [checkin, nightly]

# on checkin, run tests
checkin_factory = factory.BuildFactory()
checkin_factory.addStep(shell.Test())
checkin_factory.addStep(trigger.Trigger(schedulerNames=['nightly']))

# and every night, package the latest successful build
nightly_factory = factory.BuildFactory()
nightly_factory.addStep(shell.ShellCommand(command=['make', 'package']))

ForceScheduler Scheduler¶

The ForceScheduler scheduler is the way you can configure a force build form in the web UI.

In the builder/<builder-name> web page, you will see one form for each ForceScheduler scheduler that was configured for this builder.

This allows you to customize exactly how the build form looks, which builders have a force build form (it might not make sense to force build every builder), and who is allowed to force builds on which builders.

The scheduler takes the following parameters:

name

builderNames

See Configuring Schedulers.

reason

A parameter specifying the reason for the build. The default value is a string parameter with value "force build".

username

A parameter specifying the project for the build. The default value is a username parameter,

codebases

A list of strings or CodebaseParameter specifying the codebases that should be presented. The default is a single codebase with no name.

properties

A list of parameters, one for each property. These can be arbitrary parameters, where the parameter's name is taken as the property name, or AnyPropertyParameter, which allows the web user to specify the property name.

An example may be better than long explanation. What you need in your config file is something like:

from buildbot.schedulers.forcesched import *

sch = ForceScheduler(name="force",
             builderNames=["my-builder"],

             # will generate a combo box
             branch=ChoiceStringParameter(name="branch",
                                    choices=["main","devel"], default="main"),

             # will generate a text input
             reason=StringParameter(name="reason",label="reason:<br>",
                                    required=True, size=80),

             # will generate nothing in the form, but revision, repository,
             # and project are needed by buildbot scheduling system so we
             # need to pass a value ("")
             revision=FixedParameter(name="revision", default=""),
             repository=FixedParameter(name="repository", default=""),
             project=FixedParameter(name="project", default=""),

             # in case you dont require authentication this will display
             # input for user to type his name
             username=UserNameParameter(label="your name:<br>", size=80),

             # A completely customized property list.  The name of the
             # property is the name of the parameter
             properties=[

                BooleanParameter(name="force_build_clean",
                            label="force a make clean", default=False),

                StringParameter(name="pull_url",
                    label="optionally give a public Git pull url:<br>",
                    default="", size=80)
             ]
             )
c['schedulers'].append(sch)

Authorization¶

The force scheduler uses the web status's authorization framework to determine which user has the right to force which build. Here is an example of code on how you can define which user has which right:

user_mapping = {
    re.compile("project1-builder"): ["project1-maintainer", "john"] ,
    re.compile("project2-builder"): ["project2-maintainer", "jack"],
    re.compile(".*"): ["root"]
}
def force_auth(user,  status):
    global user_mapping
    for r,users in user_mapping.items():
        if r.match(status.name):
            if user in users:
                    return True
    return False

# use authz_cfg in your WebStatus setup
authz_cfg=authz.Authz(
    auth=my_auth,
    forceBuild = force_auth,
)

ForceSched Parameters¶

Most of the arguments to ForceScheduler are "parameters". Several classes of parameters are available, each describing a different kind of input from a force-build form.

All parameter types have a few common arguments:

name (required)

The name of the parameter. For properties, this will correspond to the name of the property that your parameter will set. The name is also used internally as the identifier for in the HTML form.

label (optional; default is same as name)

The label of the parameter. This is what is displayed to the user. HTML is permitted here.

default (optional; default: "")

The default value for the parameter, that is used if there is no user input.

required (optional; default: False)

If this is true, then an error will be shown to user if there is no input in this field

The parameter types are:

FixedParameter¶

FixedParameter(name="branch", default="trunk"),

This parameter type will not be shown on the web form, and always generate a property with its default value.

StringParameter¶

StringParameter(name="pull_url",
    label="optionally give a public Git pull url:<br>",
    default="", size=80)

This parameter type will show a single-line text-entry box, and allow the user to enter an arbitrary string. It adds the following arguments:

regex (optional)

a string that will be compiled as a regex, and used to validate the input of this parameter

size (optional; default: 10)

The width of the input field (in characters)

TextParameter¶

StringParameter(name="comments",
    label="comments to be displayed to the user of the built binary",
    default="This is a development build", cols=60, rows=5)

This parameter type is similar to StringParameter, except that it is represented in the HTML form as a textarea, allowing multi-line input. It adds the StringParameter arguments, this type allows:

cols (optional; default: 80)

The number of columns the textarea will have

rows (optional; default: 20)

The number of rows the textarea will have

This class could be subclassed in order to have more customization e.g.

developer could send a list of Git branches to pull from

developer could send a list of gerrit changes to cherry-pick,

developer could send a shell script to amend the build.

beware of security issues anyway.

IntParameter¶

IntParameter(name="debug_level",
    label="debug level (1-10)", default=2)

This parameter type accepts an integer value using a text-entry box.

BooleanParameter¶

BooleanParameter(name="force_build_clean",
    label="force a make clean", default=False)

This type represents a boolean value. It will be presented as a checkbox.

UserNameParameter¶

UserNameParameter(label="your name:<br>", size=80)

This parameter type accepts a username. If authentication is active, it will use the authenticated user instead of displaying a text-entry box.

size (optional; default: 10): The width of the input field (in characters)
need_email (optional; default True): If true, require a full email address rather than arbitrary text.

ChoiceStringParameter¶

ChoiceStringParameter(name="branch",
    choices=["main","devel"], default="main")

This parameter type lets the user choose between several choices (e.g the list of branches you are supporting, or the test campaign to run). If multiple is false, then its result is a string - one of the choices. If multiple is true, then the result is a list of strings from the choices.

Note that for some use cases, the choices need to be generated dynamically. This can be done via subclassing and overiding the 'getChoices' member function. An example of this is provided by the source for the InheritBuildParameter class.

Its arguments, in addition to the common options, are:

choices

The list of available choices.

strict (optional; default: True)

If true, verify that the user's input is from the list. Note that this only affects the validation of the form request; even if this argument is False, there is no HTML form component available to enter an arbitrary value.

multiple

If true, then the user may select multiple choices.

Example:

ChoiceStringParameter(name="forced_tests",
    label = "smoke test campaign to run",
    default = default_tests,
    multiple = True,
    strict = True,
    choices = [ "test_builder1",
                "test_builder2",
                "test_builder3" ])
])

# .. and later base the schedulers to trigger off this property:

# triggers the tests depending on the property forced_test
builder1.factory.addStep(Trigger(name="Trigger tests",
                                schedulerNames=Property("forced_tests")))

CodebaseParameter¶

CodebaseParameter(codebase="myrepo")

This is a parameter group to specify a sourcestamp for a given codebase.

codebase

The name of the codebase.

branch (optional; default: StringParameter)

A parameter specifying the branch to build. The default value is a string parameter.

revision (optional; default: StringParameter)

A parameter specifying the revision to build. The default value is a string parameter.

repository (optional; default: StringParameter)

A parameter specifying the repository for the build. The default value is a string parameter.

project (optional; default: StringParameter)

A parameter specifying the project for the build. The default value is a string parameter.

InheritBuildParameter¶

This is a special parameter for inheriting force build properties from another build. The user is presented with a list of compatible builds from which to choose, and all forced-build parameters from the selected build are copied into the new build. The new parameter is:

compatible_builds

A function to find compatible builds in the build history. This function is given the master Status instance as first argument, and the current builder name as second argument, or None when forcing all builds.

Example:

def get_compatible_builds(status, builder):
    if builder == None: # this is the case for force_build_all
        return ["cannot generate build list here"]
    # find all successful builds in builder1 and builder2
    builds = []
    for builder in ["builder1","builder2"]:
        builder_status = status.getBuilder(builder)
        for num in xrange(1,40): # 40 last builds
            b = builder_status.getBuild(-num)
            if not b:
                continue
            if b.getResults() == FAILURE:
                continue
            builds.append(builder+"/"+str(b.getNumber()))
    return builds

    # ...

        properties=[
            InheritBuildParameter(
                name="inherit",
                label="promote a build for merge",
                compatible_builds=get_compatible_builds,
                required = True),
                ])

BuildslaveChoiceParameter¶

This parameter allows a scheduler to require that a build is assigned to the chosen buildslave. The choice is assigned to the slavename property for the build. The enforceChosenSlave functor must be assigned to the canStartBuild parameter for the Builder.

Example:

from buildbot.process.builder import enforceChosenSlave

# schedulers:
    ForceScheduler(
      # ...
      properties=[
        BuildslaveChoiceParameter(),
      ]
    )

# builders:
    BuilderConfig(
      # ...
      canStartBuild=enforceChosenSlave,
    )

AnyPropertyParameter¶

This parameter type can only be used in properties, and allows the user to specify both the property name and value in the HTML form.

This Parameter is here to reimplement old Buildbot behavior, and should be avoided. Stricter parameter name and type should be preferred.

Buildslaves¶

The slaves configuration key specifies a list of known buildslaves. In the common case, each buildslave is defined by an instance of the BuildSlave class. It represents a standard, manually started machine that will try to connect to the buildbot master as a slave. Buildbot also supports "on-demand", or latent, buildslaves, which allow buildbot to dynamically start and stop buildslave instances.

A BuildSlave instance is created with a slavename and a slavepassword. These are the same two values that need to be provided to the buildslave administrator when they create the buildslave.

The slavename 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 and thus displacing the real ones.

Buildslaves with an unrecognized slavename or a non-matching password will be rejected when they attempt to connect, and a message describing the problem will be written to the log file (see Logfiles).

A configuration for two slaves would look like:

from buildbot.buildslave import BuildSlave
c['slaves'] = [
    BuildSlave('bot-solaris', 'solarispasswd'),
    BuildSlave('bot-bsd', 'bsdpasswd'),
]

BuildSlave Options¶

BuildSlave objects can also be created with an optional properties argument, a dictionary specifying properties that will be available to any builds performed on this slave. For example:

c['slaves'] = [
    BuildSlave('bot-solaris', 'solarispasswd',
                properties={ 'os':'solaris' }),
]

The BuildSlave constructor can also take an optional max_builds parameter to limit the number of builds that it will execute simultaneously:

c['slaves'] = [
    BuildSlave("bot-linux", "linuxpassword", max_builds=2)
]

Master-Slave TCP Keepalive¶

By default, the buildmaster sends a simple, non-blocking message to each slave every hour. These keepalives ensure that traffic is flowing over the underlying TCP connection, allowing the system's network stack to detect any problems before a build is started.

The interval can be modified by specifying the interval in seconds using the keepalive_interval parameter of BuildSlave:

c['slaves'] = [
    BuildSlave('bot-linux', 'linuxpasswd',
                keepalive_interval=3600),
]

The interval can be set to None to disable this functionality altogether.

When Buildslaves Go Missing¶

Sometimes, the buildslaves go away. One very common reason for this is when the buildslave process is started once (manually) and left running, but then later the machine reboots and the process is not automatically restarted.

If you'd like to have the administrator of the buildslave (or other people) be notified by email when the buildslave has been missing for too long, just add the notify_on_missing= argument to the BuildSlave definition. This value can be a single email address, or a list of addresses:

c['slaves'] = [
    BuildSlave('bot-solaris', 'solarispasswd',
                notify_on_missing="bob@example.com"),
]

By default, this will send email when the buildslave has been disconnected for more than one hour. Only one email per connection-loss event will be sent. To change the timeout, use missing_timeout= and give it a number of seconds (the default is 3600).

You can have the buildmaster send email to multiple recipients: just provide a list of addresses instead of a single one:

c['slaves'] = [
    BuildSlave('bot-solaris', 'solarispasswd',
                notify_on_missing=["bob@example.com",
                                    "alice@example.org"],
                missing_timeout=300, # notify after 5 minutes
    ),
]

The email sent this way will use a MailNotifier (see MailNotifier) status target, if one is configured. This provides a way for you to control the from address of the email, as well as the relayhost (aka smarthost) to use as an SMTP server. If no MailNotifier is configured on this buildmaster, the buildslave-missing emails will be sent using a default configuration.

Note that if you want to have a MailNotifier for buildslave-missing emails but not for regular build emails, just create one with builders=[], as follows:

from buildbot.status import mail
m = mail.MailNotifier(fromaddr="buildbot@localhost", builders=[],
                      relayhost="smtp.example.org")
c['status'].append(m)

from buildbot.buildslave import BuildSlave
c['slaves'] = [
        BuildSlave('bot-solaris', 'solarispasswd',
                    notify_on_missing="bob@example.com"),
]

Latent Buildslaves¶

The standard buildbot model has slaves started manually. The previous section described how to configure the master for this approach.

Another approach is to let the buildbot master start slaves when builds are ready, on-demand. Thanks to services such as Amazon Web Services' Elastic Compute Cloud ("AWS EC2"), this is relatively easy to set up, and can be very useful for some situations.

The buildslaves that are started on-demand are called "latent" buildslaves. As of this writing, buildbot ships with an abstract base class for building latent buildslaves, and a concrete implementation for AWS EC2 and for libvirt.

Common Options¶

The following options are available for all latent buildslaves.

build_wait_timeout: This option allows you to specify how long a latent slave should wait after a build for another build before it shuts down. It defaults to 10 minutes. If this is set to 0 then the slave will be shut down immediately. If it is less than 0 it will never automatically shutdown.

Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud ("AWS EC2")¶

EC2 is a web service that allows you to start virtual machines in an Amazon data center. Please see their website for details, including costs. Using the AWS EC2 latent buildslaves involves getting an EC2 account with AWS and setting up payment; customizing one or more EC2 machine images ("AMIs") on your desired operating system(s) and publishing them (privately if needed); and configuring the buildbot master to know how to start your customized images for "substantiating" your latent slaves.

Get an AWS EC2 Account¶

To start off, to use the AWS EC2 latent buildslave, you need to get an AWS developer account and sign up for EC2. Although Amazon often changes this process, these instructions should help you get started:

Go to http://aws.amazon.com/ and click to "Sign Up Now" for an AWS account.

Once you are logged into your account, you need to sign up for EC2. Instructions for how to do this have changed over time because Amazon changes their website, so the best advice is to hunt for it. After signing up for EC2, it may say it wants you to upload an x.509 cert. You will need this to create images (see below) but it is not technically necessary for the buildbot master configuration.

You must enter a valid credit card before you will be able to use EC2. Do that under 'Payment Method'.

Make sure you're signed up for EC2 by going to 'Your Account'->'Account Activity' and verifying EC2 is listed.

Create an AMI¶

Now you need to create an AMI and configure the master. You may need to run through this cycle a few times to get it working, but these instructions should get you started.

Creating an AMI is out of the scope of this document. The EC2 Getting Started Guide is a good resource for this task. Here are a few additional hints.

When an instance of the image starts, it needs to automatically start a buildbot slave that connects to your master (to create a buildbot slave, Creating a buildslave; to make a daemon, Launching the daemons).

You may want to make an instance of the buildbot slave, configure it as a standard buildslave in the master (i.e., not as a latent slave), and test and debug it that way before you turn it into an AMI and convert to a latent slave in the master.

Configure the Master with an EC2LatentBuildSlave¶

Now let's assume you have an AMI that should work with the EC2LatentBuildSlave. It's now time to set up your buildbot master configuration.

You will need some information from your AWS account: the Access Key Id and the Secret Access Key. If you've built the AMI yourself, you probably already are familiar with these values. If you have not, and someone has given you access to an AMI, these hints may help you find the necessary values:

While logged into your AWS account, find the "Access Identifiers" link (either on the left, or via "Your Account" -> "Access Identifiers".

On the page, you'll see alphanumeric values for "Your Access Key Id:" and "Your Secret Access Key:". Make a note of these. Later on, we'll call the first one your identifier and the second one your secret_identifier.

When creating an EC2LatentBuildSlave in the buildbot master configuration, the first three arguments are required. The name and password are the first two arguments, and work the same as with normal buildslaves. The next argument specifies the type of the EC2 virtual machine (available options as of this writing include m1.small, m1.large, m1.xlarge, c1.medium, and c1.xlarge; see the EC2 documentation for descriptions of these machines).

Here is the simplest example of configuring an EC2 latent buildslave. It specifies all necessary remaining values explicitly in the instantiation.

from buildbot.buildslave.ec2 import EC2LatentBuildSlave
c['slaves'] = [EC2LatentBuildSlave('bot1', 'sekrit', 'm1.large',
                                   ami='ami-12345',
                                   identifier='publickey',
                                   secret_identifier='privatekey'
                                   )]

The ami argument specifies the AMI that the master should start. The identifier argument specifies the AWS Access Key Id, and the secret_identifier specifies the AWS Secret Access Key. Both the AMI and the account information can be specified in alternate ways.

Note

Whoever has your identifier and secret_identifier values can request AWS work charged to your account, so these values need to be carefully protected. Another way to specify these access keys is to put them in a separate file. You can then make the access privileges stricter for this separate file, and potentially let more people read your main configuration file.

By default, you can make an .ec2 directory in the home folder of the user running the buildbot master. In that directory, create a file called aws_id. The first line of that file should be your access key id; the second line should be your secret access key id. Then you can instantiate the build slave as follows.

from buildbot.buildslave.ec2 import EC2LatentBuildSlave
c['slaves'] = [EC2LatentBuildSlave('bot1', 'sekrit', 'm1.large',
                                   ami='ami-12345')]

If you want to put the key information in another file, use the aws_id_file_path initialization argument.

Previous examples used a particular AMI. If the Buildbot master will be deployed in a process-controlled environment, it may be convenient to specify the AMI more flexibly. Rather than specifying an individual AMI, specify one or two AMI filters.

In all cases, the AMI that sorts last by its location (the S3 bucket and manifest name) will be preferred.

One available filter is to specify the acceptable AMI owners, by AWS account number (the 12 digit number, usually rendered in AWS with hyphens like "1234-5678-9012", should be entered as in integer).

from buildbot.buildslave.ec2 import EC2LatentBuildSlave
bot1 = EC2LatentBuildSlave('bot1', 'sekrit', 'm1.large',
                           valid_ami_owners=[11111111111,
                                             22222222222],
                           identifier='publickey',
                           secret_identifier='privatekey'
                           )

The other available filter is to provide a regular expression string that will be matched against each AMI's location (the S3 bucket and manifest name).

from buildbot.buildslave.ec2 import EC2LatentBuildSlave
bot1 = EC2LatentBuildSlave(
    'bot1', 'sekrit', 'm1.large',
    valid_ami_location_regex=r'buildbot\-.*/image.manifest.xml',
    identifier='publickey', secret_identifier='privatekey')

The regular expression can specify a group, which will be preferred for the sorting. Only the first group is used; subsequent groups are ignored.

from buildbot.buildslave.ec2 import EC2LatentBuildSlave
bot1 = EC2LatentBuildSlave(
    'bot1', 'sekrit', 'm1.large',
    valid_ami_location_regex=r'buildbot\-.*\-(.*)/image.manifest.xml',
    identifier='publickey', secret_identifier='privatekey')

If the group can be cast to an integer, it will be. This allows 10 to sort after 1, for instance.

from buildbot.buildslave.ec2 import EC2LatentBuildSlave
bot1 = EC2LatentBuildSlave(
    'bot1', 'sekrit', 'm1.large',
    valid_ami_location_regex=r'buildbot\-.*\-(\d+)/image.manifest.xml',
    identifier='publickey', secret_identifier='privatekey')

In addition to using the password as a handshake between the master and the slave, you may want to use a firewall to assert that only machines from a specific IP can connect as slaves. This is possible with AWS EC2 by using the Elastic IP feature. To configure, generate a Elastic IP in AWS, and then specify it in your configuration using the elastic_ip argument.

from buildbot.buildslave.ec2 import EC2LatentBuildSlave
c['slaves'] = [EC2LatentBuildSlave('bot1', 'sekrit', 'm1.large',
                                   'ami-12345',
                                   identifier='publickey',
                                   secret_identifier='privatekey',
                                   elastic_ip='208.77.188.166'
                                   )]

The EC2LatentBuildSlave supports all other configuration from the standard BuildSlave. The missing_timeout and notify_on_missing specify how long to wait for an EC2 instance to attach before considering the attempt to have failed, and email addresses to alert, respectively. missing_timeout defaults to 20 minutes.

keypair_name and security_name allow you to specify different names for these AWS EC2 values. They both default to latent_buildbot_slave.

Libvirt¶

libvirt is a virtualization API for interacting with the virtualization capabilities of recent versions of Linux and other OSes. It is LGPL and comes with a stable C API, and Python bindings.

This means we know have an API which when tied to buildbot allows us to have slaves that run under Xen, QEMU, KVM, LXC, OpenVZ, User Mode Linux, VirtualBox and VMWare.

The libvirt code in Buildbot was developed against libvirt 0.7.5 on Ubuntu Lucid. It is used with KVM to test Python code on Karmic VM's, but obviously isn't limited to that. Each build is run on a new VM, images are temporary and thrown away after each build.

Setting up libvirt¶

We won't show you how to set up libvirt as it is quite different on each platform, but there are a few things you should keep in mind.

If you are running on Ubuntu, your master should run Lucid. Libvirt and apparmor are buggy on Karmic.

If you are using the system libvirt, your buildbot master user will need to be in the libvirtd group.

If you are using KVM, your buildbot master user will need to be in the KVM group.

You need to think carefully about your virtual network first. Will NAT be enough? What IP will my VM's need to connect to for connecting to the master?

Configuring your base image¶

You need to create a base image for your builds that has everything needed to build your software. You need to configure the base image with a buildbot slave that is configured to connect to the master on boot.

Because this image may need updating a lot, we strongly suggest scripting its creation.

If you want to have multiple slaves using the same base image it can be annoying to duplicate the image just to change the buildbot credentials. One option is to use libvirt's DHCP server to allocate an identity to the slave: DHCP sets a hostname, and the slave takes its identity from that.

Doing all this is really beyond the scope of the manual, but there is a vmbuilder script and a network.xml file to create such a DHCP server in contrib/ (Contrib Scripts) that should get you started:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-vm-builder
sudo contrib/libvirt/vmbuilder

Should create an ubuntu/ folder with a suitable image in it.

virsh net-define contrib/libvirt/network.xml
virsh net-start buildbot-network

Should set up a KVM compatible libvirt network for your buildbot VM's to run on.

Configuring your Master¶

If you want to add a simple on demand VM to your setup, you only need the following. We set the username to minion1, the password to sekrit. The base image is called base_image and a copy of it will be made for the duration of the VM's life. That copy will be thrown away every time a build is complete.

from buildbot.buildslave.libvirt import LibVirtSlave, Connection
c['slaves'] = [LibVirtSlave('minion1', 'sekrit', Connection("qemu:///session"),
                            '/home/buildbot/images/minion1', '/home/buildbot/images/base_image')]

You can use virt-manager to define minion1 with the correct hardware. If you don't, buildbot won't be able to find a VM to start.

LibVirtSlave accepts the following arguments:

name: Both a buildbot username and the name of the virtual machine.
password: A password for the buildbot to login to the master with.
connection: Connection instance wrapping connection to libvirt.
hd_image: The path to a libvirt disk image, normally in qcow2 format when using KVM.
base_image: If given a base image, buildbot will clone it every time it starts a VM. This means you always have a clean environment to do your build in.
xml: If a VM isn't predefined in virt-manager, then you can instead provide XML like that used with virsh define. The VM will be created automatically when needed, and destroyed when not needed any longer.

OpenStack¶

OpenStack is a series of interconnected components that facilitates managing compute, storage, and network resources in a data center. It is available under the Apache License and has a REST interface along with a Python client.

Get an Account in an OpenStack cloud¶

Setting up OpenStack is outside the domain of this document. There are four account details necessary for the Buildbot master to interact with your OpenStack cloud: username, password, a tenant name, and the auth URL to use.

Create an Image¶

OpenStack supports a large number of image formats. OpenStack maintains a short list of prebuilt images; if the desired image is not listed, The OpenStack Compute Administration Manual is a good resource for creating new images. You need to configure the image with a buildbot slave to connect to the master on boot.

Configure the Master with an OpenStackLatentBuildSlave¶

With the configured image in hand, it is time to configure the buildbot master to create OpenStack instances of it. You will need the aforementioned account details. These are the same details set in either environment variables or passed as options to an OpenStack client.

OpenStackLatentBuildSlave accepts the following arguments:

name: The buildslave name.
password: A password for the buildslave to login to the master with.
flavor: The flavor ID to use for the instance.
image: A string containing the image UUID to use for the instance. A callable may instead be passed. It will be passed the list of available images and must return the image to use.

os_username

os_password

os_tenant_name

os_auth_url: The OpenStack authentication needed to create and delete instances. These are the same as the environment variables with uppercase names of the arguments.
meta: A dictionary of string key-value pairs to pass to the instance. These will be available under the metadata key from the metadata service.

Here is the simplest example of configuring an OpenStack latent buildslave.

from buildbot.buildslave.openstack import OpenStackLatentBuildSlave
c['slaves'] = [OpenStackLatentBuildSlave('bot2', 'sekrit',
                flavor=1, image='8ac9d4a4-5e03-48b0-acde-77a0345a9ab1',
                os_username='user', os_password='password',
                os_tenant_name='tenant',
                os_auth_url='http://127.0.0.1:35357/v2.0')]

The image argument also supports being given a callable. The callable will be passed the list of available images and must return the image to use. The invocation happens in a separate thread to prevent blocking the build master when interacting with OpenStack.

from buildbot.buildslave.openstack import OpenStackLatentBuildSlave

def find_image(images):
    # Sort oldest to newest.
    cmp_fn = lambda x,y: cmp(x.created, y.created)
    candidate_images = sorted(images, cmp=cmp_fn)
    # Return the oldest candiate image.
    return candidate_images[0]

c['slaves'] = [OpenStackLatentBuildSlave('bot2', 'sekrit',
                flavor=1, image=find_image,
                os_username='user', os_password='password',
                os_tenant_name='tenant',
                os_auth_url='http://127.0.0.1:35357/v2.0')]

OpenStackLatentBuildSlave supports all other configuration from the standard BuildSlave. The missing_timeout and notify_on_missing specify how long to wait for an OpenStack instance to attach before considering the attempt to have failed and email addresses to alert, respectively. missing_timeout defaults to 20 minutes.

Dangers with Latent Buildslaves¶

Any latent build slave that interacts with a for-fee service, such as the EC2LatentBuildSlave, brings significant risks. As already identified, the configuration will need access to account information that, if obtained by a criminal, can be used to charge services to your account. Also, bugs in the buildbot software may lead to unnecessary charges. In particular, if the master neglects to shut down an instance for some reason, a virtual machine may be running unnecessarily, charging against your account. Manual and/or automatic (e.g. nagios with a plugin using a library like boto) double-checking may be appropriate.

A comparatively trivial note is that currently if two instances try to attach to the same latent buildslave, it is likely that the system will become confused. This should not occur, unless, for instance, you configure a normal build slave to connect with the authentication of a latent buildbot. If this situation does occurs, stop all attached instances and restart the master.

Builder Configuration¶

The builders configuration key is a list of objects giving configuration for the Builders. For more information on the function of Builders in Buildbot, see the Concepts chapter. The class definition for the builder configuration is in buildbot.config. In the configuration file, its use looks like:

from buildbot.config import BuilderConfig
c['builders'] = [
    BuilderConfig(name='quick', slavenames=['bot1', 'bot2'], factory=f_quick),
    BuilderConfig(name='thorough', slavename='bot1', factory=f_thorough),
]

BuilderConfig takes the following keyword arguments:

name: This specifies the Builder's name, which is used in status reports.

slavename

slavenames: These arguments specify the buildslave or buildslaves that will be used by this Builder. All slaves names must appear in the slaves configuration parameter. Each buildslave can accommodate multiple builders. The slavenames parameter can be a list of names, while slavename can specify only one slave.
factory: This is a buildbot.process.factory.BuildFactory instance which controls how the build is performed by defining the steps in the build. Full details appear in their own section, Build Factories.

Other optional keys may be set on each BuilderConfig:

builddir

Specifies the name of a subdirectory of the master's basedir in which everything related to this builder will be stored. This holds build status information. If not set, this parameter defaults to the builder name, with some characters escaped. Each builder must have a unique build directory.

slavebuilddir

Specifies the name of a subdirectory (under the slave's configured base directory) in which everything related to this builder will be placed on the buildslave. This is where checkouts, compiles, and tests are run. If not set, defaults to builddir. If a slave is connected to multiple builders that share the same slavebuilddir, make sure the slave is set to run one build at a time or ensure this is fine to run multiple builds from the same directory simultaneously.

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.

nextSlave

If provided, this is a function that controls which slave will be assigned future jobs. The function is passed two arguments, the Builder object which is assigning a new job, and a list of BuildSlave objects. The function should return one of the BuildSlave objects, or None if none of the available slaves should be used. The function can optionally return a Deferred, which should fire with the same results.

nextBuild

If provided, this is a function that controls which build request will be handled next. The function is passed two arguments, the Builder object which is assigning a new job, and a list of BuildRequest objects of pending builds. The function should return one of the BuildRequest objects, or None if none of the pending builds should be started. This function can optionally return a Deferred which should fire with the same results.

canStartBuild

If provided, this is a function that can veto whether a particular buildslave should be used for a given build request. The function is passed three arguments: the Builder, a BuildSlave, and a BuildRequest. The function should return True if the combination is acceptable, or False otherwise. This function can optionally return a Deferred which should fire with the same results.

locks

This argument specifies a list of locks that apply to this builder; see Interlocks.

env

A Builder may be given a dictionary of environment variables in this parameter. The variables are used in ShellCommand steps in builds created by this builder. The environment variables will override anything in the buildslave's environment. Variables passed directly to a ShellCommand will override variables of the same name passed to the Builder.

For example, if you have a pool of identical slaves it is often easier to manage variables like PATH from Buildbot rather than manually editing it inside of the slaves' environment.

f = factory.BuildFactory
f.addStep(ShellCommand(
              command=['bash', './configure']))
f.addStep(Compile())

c['builders'] = [
  BuilderConfig(name='test', factory=f,
        slavenames=['slave1', 'slave2', 'slave3', 'slave4'],
        env={'PATH': '/opt/local/bin:/opt/app/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin'}),
]

mergeRequests: Specifies how build requests for this builder should be merged. See Merging Build Requests, below.

properties: A builder may be given a dictionary of Build Properties specific for this builder in this parameter. Those values can be used later on like other properties. Interpolate.
description: A builder may be given an arbitrary description, which will show up in the web status on the builder's page.

Merging Build Requests¶

When more than one build request is available for a builder, Buildbot can "merge" the requests into a single build. This is desirable when build requests arrive more quickly than the available slaves can satisfy them, but has the drawback that separate results for each build are not available.

Requests are only candidated for a merge if both requests have exactly the same codebases.

This behavior can be controlled globally, using the mergeRequests parameter, and on a per-Builder basis, using the mergeRequests argument to the Builder configuration. If mergeRequests is given, it completely overrides the global configuration.

For either configuration parameter, a value of True (the default) causes buildbot to merge BuildRequests that have "compatible" source stamps. Source stamps are compatible if:

their codebase, branch, project, and repository attributes match exactly;
neither source stamp has a patch (e.g., from a try scheduler); and
either both source stamps are associated with changes, or neither ar associated with changes but they have matching revisions.

This algorithm is implemented by the SourceStamp method canBeMergedWith.

A configuration value of False indicates that requests should never be merged.

The configuration value can also be a callable, specifying a custom merging function. See Merge Request Functions for details.

Prioritizing Builds¶

The BuilderConfig parameter nextBuild can be use to prioritize build requests within a builder. Note that this is orthogonal to Prioritizing Builders, which controls the order in which builders are called on to start their builds. The details of writing such a function are in Build Priority Functions.

Such a function can be provided to the BuilderConfig as follows:

def pickNextBuild(builder, requests):
    # ...
c['builders'] = [
    BuilderConfig(name='test', factory=f,
        nextBuild=pickNextBuild,
        slavenames=['slave1', 'slave2', 'slave3', 'slave4']),
]

Build Factories¶

Each Builder is equipped with a build factory, which is defines the steps used to perform that particular type of build. This factory is created in the configuration file, and attached to a Builder through the factory element of its dictionary.

The steps used by these builds are defined in the next section, Build Steps.

Note

Build factories are used with builders, and are not added directly to the buildmaster configuration dictionary.

Defining a Build Factory¶

A BuildFactory defines the steps that every build will follow. Think of it as a glorified script. For example, a build factory which consists of an SVN checkout followed by a make build would be configured as follows:

from buildbot.steps import svn, shell
from buildbot.process import factory

f = factory.BuildFactory()
f.addStep(svn.SVN(svnurl="http://..", mode="incremental"))
f.addStep(shell.Compile(command=["make", "build"]))

This factory would then be attached to one builder (or several, if desired):

c['builders'].append(
    BuilderConfig(name='quick', slavenames=['bot1', 'bot2'], factory=f))

It is also possible to pass a list of steps into the BuildFactory when it is created. Using addStep is usually simpler, but there are cases where is is more convenient to create the list of steps ahead of time, perhaps using some Python tricks to generate the steps.

from buildbot.steps import source, shell
from buildbot.process import factory

all_steps = [
    source.CVS(cvsroot=CVSROOT, cvsmodule="project", mode="update"),
    shell.Compile(command=["make", "build"]),
]
f = factory.BuildFactory(all_steps)

Finally, you can also add a sequence of steps all at once:

f.addSteps(all_steps)

Attributes¶

The following attributes can be set on a build factory after it is created, e.g.,

f = factory.BuildFactory()
f.useProgress = False

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.

workdir

(defaults to 'build'): workdir given to every build step created by this factory as default. The workdir can be overridden in a build step definition.

If this attribute is set to a string, that string will be used for constructing the workdir (buildslave base + builder builddir + workdir). The attribute can also be a Python callable, for more complex cases, as described in Factory Workdir Functions.

Predefined Build Factories¶

Buildbot includes a few predefined build factories that perform common build sequences. In practice, these are rarely used, as every site has slightly different requirements, but the source for these factories may provide examples for implementation of those requirements.

GNUAutoconf¶

class buildbot.process.factory.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:

f = factory.GNUAutoconf(source=source.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 @code{make check}. If set to None, the test step is skipped.

BasicBuildFactory¶

class buildbot.process.factory.BasicBuildFactory¶

This is a subclass of GNUAutoconf which assumes the source is in CVS, and uses mode='clobber' to always build from a clean working copy.

BasicSVN¶

class buildbot.process.factory.BasicSVN¶

This class is similar to BasicBuildFactory, but uses SVN instead of CVS.

QuickBuildFactory¶

class buildbot.process.factory.QuickBuildFactory¶

The QuickBuildFactory class is a subclass of GNUAutoconf which assumes the source is in CVS, and uses mode='update' to get incremental updates.

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, this class sets the useProgress flag 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.

This class is probably not of use to new projects.

CPAN¶

class buildbot.process.factory.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, like that used by GNUAutoconf.
perl: A string which specifies the perl executable to use. Defaults to just perl.

Distutils¶

class buildbot.process.factory.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, like 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).

Trial¶

class buildbot.process.factory.Trial¶

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:

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.
python: which Python executable to use. This list will form the start of the argv array that will launch trial. If you use this, you should set trial to an explicit path (like /usr/bin/trial or ./bin/trial). The parameter defaults to None, which leaves it out entirely (running trial args instead of python ./bin/trial args). Likely values are ['python'], ['python2.2'], or ['python', '-Wall'].
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.
trialMode: a list of arguments to pass to trial, specifically to set the reporting mode. This defaults to ['--reporter=bwverbose'], which only works for Twisted-2.1.0 and later.
trialArgs: a list of arguments to pass to trial, available to turn on any extra flags you like. Defaults to [].
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 testChanges.
testChanges: if True, ignore the tests parameter and instead ask the Build for all the files that make up the Changes going into this build. Pass these filenames to trial and ask it to look for test-case-name tags, running just the tests necessary to cover the changes.
recurse: If True, tells Trial (with the --recurse argument) to look in all subdirectories for additional test cases.
reactor: which reactor to use, like 'gtk' or 'java'. If not provided, the Twisted's usual platform-dependent default is used.
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.

The step can also take any of the ShellCommand arguments, e.g., haltOnFailure.

Unless one of tests or testChanges are set, the step will generate an exception.

Properties¶

Build properties are a generalized way to provide configuration information to build steps; see Build Properties for the conceptual overview of properties.

Some build properties come from external sources and are set before the build begins; others are set during the build, and available for later steps. The sources for properties are:

global configuration -- These properties apply to all builds.
schedulers -- A scheduler can specify properties that become available to all builds it starts.
changes -- A change can have properties attached to it, supplying extra information gathered by the change source. This is most commonly used with the sendchange command.
forced builds -- The "Force Build" form allows users to specify properties
buildslaves -- A buildslave can pass properties on to the builds it performs.
builds -- A build automatically sets a number of properties on itself.
builders -- A builder can set properties on all the builds it runs.
steps -- The steps of a build can set properties that are available to subsequent steps. In particular, source steps set the got_revision property.

If the same property is supplied in multiple places, the final appearance takes precedence. For example, a property set in a builder configuration will override one supplied by a scheduler.

Properties are stored internally in JSON format, so they are limited to basic types of data: numbers, strings, lists, and dictionaries.

Common Build Properties¶

The following build properties are set when the build is started, and are available to all steps.

got_revision

This property is set when a Source step checks out the source tree, and provides the revision that was actually obtained from the VC system. In general this should be the same as revision, except for non-absolute sourcestamps, where got_revision indicates what revision was current when the checkout was performed. This can be used to rebuild the same source code later.

Note

For some VC systems (Darcs in particular), the revision is a large string containing newlines, and is not suitable for interpolation into a filename.

For multi-codebase builds (where codebase is not the default ''), this property is a dictionary, keyed by codebase.

buildername: This is a string that indicates which Builder the build was a part of. The combination of buildername and buildnumber uniquely identify a build.

buildnumber: Each build gets a number, scoped to the Builder (so the first build performed on any given Builder will have a build number of 0). This integer property contains the build's number.

slavename: This is a string which identifies which buildslave the build is running on.

scheduler: If the build was started from a scheduler, then this property will contain the name of that scheduler.
workdir: The absolute path of the base working directory on the slave, of the current builder.

For single codebase builds, where the codebase is '', the following Source Stamp Attributes are also available as properties: branch, revision, repository, and project .

Source Stamp Attributes¶

branch revision repository project codebase

For details of these attributes see Concepts.

changes

This attribute is a list of dictionaries reperesnting the changes that make up this sourcestamp.

has_patch patch_level patch_body patch_subdir patch_author patch_comment

These attributes are set if the source stamp was created by a try scheduler.

Using Properties in Steps¶

For the most part, properties are used to alter the behavior of build steps during a build. This is done by annotating the step definition in master.cfg with placeholders. When the step is executed, these placeholders will be replaced using the current values of the build properties.

Note

Properties are defined while a build is in progress; their values are not available when the configuration file is parsed. This can sometimes confuse newcomers to Buildbot! In particular, the following is a common error:

if Property('release_train') == 'alpha':
    f.addStep(...)

This does not work because the value of the property is not available when the if statement is executed. However, Python will not detect this as an error - you will just never see the step added to the factory.

You can use build properties in most step parameters. Please file bugs for any parameters which do not accept properties.

Property¶

The simplest form of annotation is to wrap the property name with Property:

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
from buildbot.process.properties import Property

f.addStep(ShellCommand(command=[ 'echo', 'buildername:', Property('buildername') ]))

You can specify a default value by passing a default keyword argument:

f.addStep(ShellCommand(command=[ 'echo', 'warnings:',
                                 Property('warnings', default='none') ]))

The default value is used when the property doesn't exist, or when the value is something Python regards as False. The defaultWhenFalse argument can be set to False to force buildbot to use the default argument only if the parameter is not set:

f.addStep(ShellCommand(command=[ 'echo', 'warnings:',
                 Property('warnings', default='none', defaultWhenFalse=False) ]))

The default value can reference other properties, e.g.,

command=Property('command', default=Property('default-command'))

Interpolate¶

Property can only be used to replace an entire argument: in the example above, it replaces an argument to echo. Often, properties need to be interpolated into strings, instead. The tool for that job is Interpolate.

The more common pattern is to use Python dictionary-style string interpolation by using the %(prop:<propname>)s syntax. In this form, the property name goes in the parentheses, as above. A common mistake is to omit the trailing "s", leading to a rather obscure error from Python ("ValueError: unsupported format character").

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
from buildbot.process.properties import Interpolate
f.addStep(ShellCommand(command=[ 'make', Interpolate('REVISION=%(prop:got_revision)s'),
                                 'dist' ]))

This example will result in a make command with an argument like REVISION=12098.

The syntax of dictionary-style interpolation is a selector, followed by a colon, followed by a selector specific key, optionally followed by a colon and a string indicating how to interpret the value produced by the key.

The following selectors are supported.

prop: The key is the name of a property.
src: The key is a codebase and source stamp attribute, separated by a colon.
kw: The key refers to a keyword argument passed to Interpolate.

The following ways of interpreting the value are available.

-replacement: If the key exists, substitute its value; otherwise, substitute replacement. replacement may be empty (%(prop:propname:-)s). This is the default.
~replacement: Like -replacement, but only substitutes the value of the key if it is something Python regards as True. Python considers None, 0, empty lists, and the empty string to be false, so such values will be replaced by replacement.
+replacement: If the key exists, substitute replacement; otherwise, substitute an empty string.

?|sub_if_exists|sub_if_missing

#?|sub_if_true|sub_if_false: Ternary substitution, depending on either the key being present (with ?, similar to +) or being True (with #?, like ~). Notice that there is a pipe immediately following the question mark and between the two substitution alternatives. The character that follows the question mark is used as the delimiter between the two alternatives. In the above examples, it is a pipe, but any character other than ( can be used.

Although these are similar to shell substitutions, no other substitutions are currently supported.

Example

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
from buildbot.process.properties import Interpolate
f.addStep(ShellCommand(command=[ 'make', Interpolate('REVISION=%(prop:got_revision:-%(src::revision:-unknown)s)s')
                                 'dist' ]))

In addition, Interpolate supports using positional string interpolation. Here, %s is used as a placeholder, and the substitutions (which may themselves be placeholders), are given as subsequent arguments:

.. note:

Like Python, you can use either positional interpolation or dictionary-style interpolation, not both. Thus you cannot use a string like Interpolate("foo-%(src::revision)s-%s", "branch").

Renderer¶

While Interpolate can handle many simple cases, and even some common conditionals, more complex cases are best handled with Python code. The renderer decorator creates a renderable object that will be replaced with the result of the function, called when the step it's passed to begins. The function receives an IProperties object, which it can use to examine the values of any and all properties. For example:

 @properties.renderer
 def makeCommand(props):
     command = [ 'make' ]
     cpus = props.getProperty('CPUs')
     if cpus:
         command += [ '-j', str(cpus+1) ]
     else:
         command += [ '-j', '2' ]
     command += [ 'all' ]
     return command
f.addStep(ShellCommand(command=makeCommand))

You can think of renderer as saying "call this function when the step starts".

WithProperties¶

Warning

This placeholder is deprecated. It is an older version of Interpolate. It exists for compatibility with older configs.

The simplest use of this class is with positional string interpolation. Here, %s is used as a placeholder, and property names are given as subsequent arguments:

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
from buildbot.process.properties import WithProperties
f.addStep(ShellCommand(
          command=["tar", "czf",
                   WithProperties("build-%s-%s.tar.gz", "branch", "revision"),
                   "source"]))

If this BuildStep were used in a tree obtained from Git, it would create a tarball with a name like build-master-a7d3a333db708e786edb34b6af646edd8d4d3ad9.tar.gz.

The more common pattern is to use Python dictionary-style string interpolation by using the %(propname)s syntax. In this form, the property name goes in the parentheses, as above. A common mistake is to omit the trailing "s", leading to a rather obscure error from Python ("ValueError: unsupported format character").

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
from buildbot.process.properties import WithProperties
f.addStep(ShellCommand(command=[ 'make', WithProperties('REVISION=%(got_revision)s'),
                                 'dist' ]))

This example will result in a make command with an argument like REVISION=12098.

The dictionary-style interpolation supports a number of more advanced syntaxes in the parentheses.

propname:-replacement: If propname exists, substitute its value; otherwise, substitute replacement. replacement may be empty (%(propname:-)s)
propname:~replacement: Like propname:-replacement, but only substitutes the value of property propname if it is something Python regards as True. Python considers None, 0, empty lists, and the empty string to be false, so such values will be replaced by replacement.
propname:+replacement: If propname exists, substitute replacement; otherwise, substitute an empty string.

Although these are similar to shell substitutions, no other substitutions are currently supported, and replacement in the above cannot contain more substitutions.

Note: like Python, you can use either positional interpolation or dictionary-style interpolation, not both. Thus you cannot use a string like WithProperties("foo-%(revision)s-%s", "branch").

Custom Renderables¶

If the options described above are not sufficient, more complex substitutions can be achieved by writing custom renderables.

Renderables are objects providing the IRenderable interface. That interface is simple - objects must provide a getRenderingFor method. The method should take one argument - an IProperties provider - and should return a string or a deferred firing with a string. Pass instances of the class anywhere other renderables are accepted. For example:

class DetermineFoo(object):
    implements(IRenderable)
    def getRenderingFor(self, props)
        if props.hasProperty('bar'):
            return props['bar']
        elif props.hasProperty('baz'):
            return props['baz']
        return 'qux'
ShellCommand(command=['echo', DetermineFoo()])

or, more practically,

class Now(object):
    implements(IRenderable)
    def getRenderingFor(self, props)
        return time.clock()
ShellCommand(command=['make', Interpolate('TIME=%(kw:now)', now=Now())])

This is equivalent to:

@renderer
def now(props):
    return time.clock()
ShellCommand(command=['make', Interpolate('TIME=%(kw:now)', now=now)])

Note that a custom renderable must be instantiated (and its constructor can take whatever arguments you'd like), whereas a function decorated with renderer can be used directly.

Build Steps¶

BuildSteps are usually specified in the buildmaster's configuration file, in a list that goes into the BuildFactory. The BuildStep instances in this list are used as templates to construct new independent copies for each build (so that state can be kept on the BuildStep in one build without affecting a later build). Each BuildFactory can be created with a list of steps, or the factory can be created empty and then steps added to it using the addStep method:

from buildbot.steps import source, shell
from buildbot.process import factory

f = factory.BuildFactory()
f.addStep(source.SVN(svnurl="http://svn.example.org/Trunk/"))
f.addStep(shell.ShellCommand(command=["make", "all"]))
f.addStep(shell.ShellCommand(command=["make", "test"]))

The basic behavior for a BuildStep is to:

run for a while, then stop

possibly invoke some RemoteCommands on the attached build slave

possibly produce a set of log files

finish with a status described by one of four values defined in buildbot.status.builder: SUCCESS, WARNINGS, FAILURE, SKIPPED

provide a list of short strings to describe the step

The rest of this section describes all the standard BuildStep objects available for use in a Build, and the parameters which can be used to control each. A full list of build steps is available in the Build Step Index.

Common Parameters¶

All BuildSteps accept some common parameters. Some of these control how their individual status affects the overall build. Others are used to specify which Locks (see Interlocks) should be acquired before allowing the step to run.

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. Steps with alwaysRun=True are still run. Generally speaking, haltOnFailure implies flunkOnFailure (the default for most BuildSteps). In some cases, particularly series of tests, it makes sense to haltOnFailure if something fails early on but not flunkOnFailure. This can be achieved with haltOnFailure=True, flunkOnFailure=False.

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.

alwaysRun: if True, this build step will always be run, even if a previous buildstep with haltOnFailure=True has failed.

doStepIf: A step can be configured to only run under certain conditions. To do this, set the step's doStepIf to a boolean value, or to a function that returns a boolean value or Deferred. If the value or function result is false, then the step will return SKIPPED without doing anything. Otherwise, the step will be executed normally. If you set doStepIf to a function, that function should accept one parameter, which will be the Step object itself.

hideStepIf

A step can be optionally hidden from the waterfall and build details web pages. To do this, set the step's hideStepIf to a boolean value, or to a function that takes two parameters -- the results and the BuildStep -- and returns a boolean value. Steps are always shown while they execute, however after the step as finished, this parameter is evaluated (if a function) and if the value is True, the step is hidden. For example, in order to hide the step if the step has been skipped,

factory.addStep(Foo(..., hideStepIf=lambda results, s: results==SKIPPED))

locks: a list of Locks (instances of buildbot.locks.SlaveLock or buildbot.locks.MasterLock) that should be acquired before starting this Step. The Locks will be released when the step is complete. Note that this is a list of actual Lock instances, not names. Also note that all Locks must have unique names. See Interlocks.

Source Checkout¶

At the moment, Buildbot contains two implementations of most source steps. The new implementation handles most of the logic on the master side, and has a simpler, more unified approach. The older implementation (Source Checkout (Slave-Side)) handles the logic on the slave side, and some of the classes have a bewildering array of options.

Caution

Master-side source checkout steps are recently developed and not stable yet. If you find any bugs please report them on the Buildbot Trac. The older Slave-side described source steps are Source Checkout (Slave-Side).

The old source steps are imported like this:

from buildbot.steps.source import Git

while new source steps are in separate source-packages for each version-control system:

from buildbot.steps.source.git import Git

New users should, where possible, use the new implementations. The old implementations will be deprecated in a later release. Old users should take this opportunity to switch to the new implementations while both are supported by Buildbot.

Some version control systems have not yet been implemented as master-side steps. If you are interested in continued support for such a version control system, please consider helping the Buildbot developers to create such an implementation. In particular, version-control systems with proprietary licenses will not be supported without access to the version-control system for development.

Common Parameters¶

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

mode method

These two parameters specify the means by which the source is checked out. mode specifies the type of checkout and method tells about the way to implement it.
factory = BuildFactory()
from buildbot.steps.source.mercurial import Mercurial
factory.addStep(Mercurial(repourl='path/to/repo', mode='full', method='fresh'))
The mode parameter a string describing the kind of VC operation that is desired, defaulting to incremental. The options are

incremental

Update the source to the desired revision, but do not remove any other files generated by previous builds. This allows compilers to take advantage of object files from previous builds. This mode is exactly same as the old update mode.

full

Update the source, but delete remnants of previous builds. Build steps that follow will need to regenerate all object files.

Methods are specific to the version-control system in question, as they may take advantage of special behaviors in that version-control system that can make checkouts more efficient or reliable.

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 behavior of checking out the revision in the source stamp, and always update to the latest revision in the repository 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.

repository

The name of this parameter might vary depending on the Source step you are running. The concept explained here is common to all steps and applies to repourl as well as for baseURL (when applicable).

A common idiom is to pass Property('repository', 'url://default/repo/path') as repository. This grabs the repository from the source stamp of the build. This can be a security issue, if you allow force builds from the web, or have the WebStatus change hooks enabled; as the buildslave will download code from an arbitrary repository.

codebase

This specifies which codebase the source step should use to select the right source stamp. The default codebase value is ''. The codebase must correspond to a codebase assigned by the codebaseGenerator. If there is no codebaseGenerator defined in the master then codebase doesn't need to be set, the default value will then match all changes.

timeout

Specifies the timeout for slave-side operations, in seconds. If your repositories are particularly large, then you may need to increase this value from its default of 1200 (20 minutes).

logEnviron

If this option is true (the default), then the step's logfile will describe the environment variables on the slave. In situations where the environment is not relevant and is long, it may be easier to set logEnviron=False.

env

a dictionary of environment strings which will be added to the child command's environment. The usual property interpolations can be used in environment variable names and values - see Properties.

Mercurial¶

class buildbot.steps.source.mercurial.Mercurial¶

The Mercurial build step performs a Mercurial (aka hg) checkout or update.

Branches are available in two modes: dirname, where the name of the branch is a suffix of the name of the repository, or inrepo, which uses Hg's named-branches support. Make sure this setting matches your changehook, if you have that installed.

from buildbot.steps.source.mercurial import Mercurial
factory.addStep(Mercurial(repourl='path/to/repo', mode='full',
                          method='fresh', branchType='inrepo'))

The Mercurial step takes the following arguments:

repourl: where the Mercurial source repository is available.
defaultBranch: this specifies the name of the branch to use when a Build does not provide one of its own. This will be appended to repourl to create the string that will be passed to the hg clone command.
branchType: either 'dirname' (default) or 'inrepo' depending on whether the branch name should be appended to the repourl or the branch is a Mercurial named branch and can be found within the repourl.
clobberOnBranchChange: boolean, defaults to True. If set and using inrepos branches, clobber the tree at each branch change. Otherwise, just update to the branch.

mode method

Mercurial's incremental mode does not require a method. The full mode has three methods defined:

clobber

It removes the build directory entirely then makes full clone from repo. This can be slow as it need to clone whole repository

fresh

This remove all other files except those tracked by VCS. First it does hg purge --all then pull/update

clean

All the files which are tracked by Mercurial and listed ignore files are not deleted. Remaining all other files will be deleted before pull/update. This is equivalent to hg purge then pull/update.

Git¶

class buildbot.steps.source.git.Git¶

The Git build step clones or updates a Git repository and checks out the specified branch or revision. Note that the buildbot supports Git version 1.2.0 and later: earlier versions (such as the one shipped in Ubuntu 'Dapper') do not support the git init command that the buildbot uses.

from buildbot.steps.source.git import Git
factory.addStep(Git(repourl='git://path/to/repo', mode='full',
                          method='clobber', submodules=True))

The Git step takes the following arguments:

repourl: (required): the URL of the upstream Git repository.
branch: (optional): this specifies the name of the branch to use when a Build does not provide one of its own. If this this parameter is not specified, and the Build does not provide a branch, the default branch of the remote repository will be used.
submodules: (optional): when initializing/updating a Git repository, this decides whether or not buildbot should consider Git submodules. Default: False.
shallow: (optional): instructs git to attempt shallow clones (--depth 1). This option can be used only in full builds with clobber method.
progress: (optional): passes the (--progress) flag to (git fetch). This solves issues of long fetches being killed due to lack of output, but requires Git 1.7.2 or later.
retryFetch: (optional): this value defaults to False. In any case if fetch fails buildbot retries to fetch again instead of failing the entire source checkout.
clobberOnFailure: (optional): defaults to False. If a fetch or full clone fails we can checkout source removing everything. This way new repository will be cloned. If retry fails it fails the source checkout step.

mode

(optional): defaults to 'incremental'. Specifies whether to clean the build tree or not.

incremental

The source is update, but any built files are left untouched.

full

The build tree is clean of any built files. The exact method for doing this is controlled by the method argument.

method

(optional): defaults to fresh when mode is full. Git's incremental mode does not require a method. The full mode has four methods defined:

clobber

It removes the build directory entirely then makes full clone from repo. This can be slow as it need to clone whole repository. To make faster clones enable shallow option. If shallow options is enabled and build request have unknown revision value, then this step fails.

fresh

This remove all other files except those tracked by Git. First it does git clean -d -f -x then fetch/checkout to a specified revision(if any). This option is equal to update mode with ignore_ignores=True in old steps.

clean

All the files which are tracked by Git and listed ignore files are not deleted. Remaining all other files will be deleted before fetch/checkout. This is equivalent to git clean -d -f then fetch. This is equivalent to ignore_ignores=False in old steps.

copy

This first checkout source into source directory then copy the source directory to build directory then performs the build operation in the copied directory. This way we make fresh builds with very less bandwidth to download source. The behavior of source checkout follows exactly same as incremental. It performs all the incremental checkout behavior in source directory.

getDescription

(optional) After checkout, invoke a git describe on the revision and save the result in a property; the property's name is either commit-description or commit-description-foo, depending on whether the codebase argument was also provided. The argument should either be a bool or dict, and will change how git describe is called:

getDescription=False: disables this feature explicitly

getDescription=True or empty dict(): Run git describe with no args

getDescription={...}: a dict with keys named the same as the Git option. Each key's value can be False or None to explicitly skip that argument.

For the following keys, a value of True appends the same-named Git argument:

all : --all

always: --always

contains: --contains

debug: --debug

long: --long`

exact-match: --exact-match

tags: --tags

dirty: --dirty

For the following keys, an integer or string value (depending on what Git expects) will set the argument's parameter appropriately. Examples show the key-value pair:

match=foo: --match foo

abbrev=7: --abbrev=7

candidates=7: --candidates=7

dirty=foo: --dirty=foo

config

(optional) A dict of git configuration settings to pass to the remote git commands.

SVN¶

class buildbot.steps.source.svn.SVN¶

The SVN build step performs a Subversion checkout or update. There are two basic ways of setting up the checkout step, depending upon whether you are using multiple branches or not.

The SVN step should be created with the repourl argument:

repourl: (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. One way to specify the branch is to use Interpolate. For example, if you wanted to check out the trunk repository, you could use repourl=Interpolate("http://svn.example.com/repos/%(src::branch)s") Alternatively, 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 directly use repourl="http://svn.example.com/repos/trunk/calc" as an argument to your SVN step.

If you are building from multiple branches, then you should create the SVN step with the repourl and provide branch information with Interpolate:

from buildbot.steps.source.svn import SVN
factory.addStep(SVN(mode='incremental',
               repourl=Interpolate('svn://svn.example.org/svn/%(src::branch)s/myproject')))

Alternatively, the repourl argument can be used to create the SVN step without Interpolate:

from buildbot.steps.source.svn import SVN
factory.addStep(SVN(mode='full',
               repourl='svn://svn.example.org/svn/myproject/trunk'))

username

(optional): if specified, this will be passed to the svn binary with a --username option.

password

(optional): if specified, this will be passed to the svn binary with a --password option.

extra_args

(optional): if specified, an array of strings that will be passed as extra arguments to the svn binary.

keep_on_purge

(optional): specific files or directories to keep between purges, like some build outputs that can be reused between builds.

depth

(optional): Specify depth argument to achieve sparse checkout. Only available if slave has Subversion 1.5 or higher.

If set to empty updates will not pull in any files or subdirectories not already present. If set to files, updates will pull in any files not already present, but not directories. If set to immediates, updates will pull in any files or subdirectories not already present, the new subdirectories will have depth: empty. If set to infinity, updates will pull in any files or subdirectories not already present; the new subdirectories will have depth-infinity. Infinity is equivalent to SVN default update behavior, without specifying any depth argument.

preferLastChangedRev

(optional): By default, the got_revision property is set to the repository's global revision ("Revision" in the svn info output). Set this parameter to True to have it set to the "Last Changed Rev" instead.

mode method

SVN's incremental mode does not require a method. The full mode has five methods defined:

clobber

It removes the working directory for each build then makes full checkout.

fresh

This always always purges local changes before updating. This deletes unversioned files and reverts everything that would appear in a svn status --no-ignore. This is equivalent to the old update mode with always_purge.

clean

This is same as fresh except that it deletes all unversioned files generated by svn status.

copy

This first checkout source into source directory then copy the source directory to build directory then performs the build operation in the copied directory. This way we make fresh builds with very less bandwidth to download source. The behavior of source checkout follows exactly same as incremental. It performs all the incremental checkout behavior in source directory.

export

Similar to method='copy', except using svn export to create build directory so that there are no .svn directories in the build directory.

If you are using branches, you must also make sure your ChangeSource will report the correct branch names.

CVS¶

class buildbot.steps.source.cvs.CVS¶

The CVS build step performs a CVS checkout or update.

from buildbot.steps.source.cvs import CVS
factory.addStep(CVS(mode='incremental',
               cvsroot=':pserver:me@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/myproj',
               cvsmodule='buildbot'))

This step takes the following arguments:

cvsroot: (required): specify the CVSROOT value, which points to a CVS repository, probably on a remote machine. For example, if Buildbot was hosted in CVS then the cvsroot value you would use to get a copy of the Buildbot source code might be :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 argument checkout in the CVS command.
extra_options: a list of flags to be put after the checkout in the CVS command.

mode method

No method is needed for incremental mode. For full mode, method can take the values shown below. If no value is given, it defaults to fresh.

clobber

This specifies to remove the workdir and make a full checkout.

fresh

This method first runs cvsdisard in the build directory, then updates it. This requires cvsdiscard which is a part of the cvsutil package.

clean

This method is the same as method='fresh', but it runs cvsdiscard --ignore instead of cvsdiscard.

copy

This maintains a source directory for source, which it updates copies to the build directory. This allows Buildbot to start with a fresh directory, without downloading the entire repository on every build.

Bzr¶

class buildbot.steps.source.bzr.Bzr¶

bzr is a descendant of Arch/Baz, and is frequently referred to as simply Bazaar. The repository-vs-workspace model is similar to Darcs, but it uses a strictly linear sequence of revisions (one history per branch) like Arch. Branches are put in subdirectories. This makes it look very much like Mercurial.

from buildbot.steps.source.bzr import Bzr
factory.addStep(Bzr(mode='incremental',
               repourl='lp:~knielsen/maria/tmp-buildbot-test'))

The step takes the following arguments:

repourl: (required unless baseURL is provided): the URL at which the Bzr source repository is available.
baseURL: (required unless repourl is provided): the base repository URL, to which a branch name will be appended. It should probably end in a slash.
defaultBranch: (allowed if and only if baseURL is provided): this specifies the name of the branch to use when a Build does not provide one of its own. This will be appended to baseURL to create the string that will be passed to the bzr checkout command.

mode method

No method is needed for incremental mode. For full mode, method can take the values shown below. If no value is given, it defaults to fresh.

clobber

This specifies to remove the workdir and make a full checkout.

fresh

This method first runs bzr clean-tree to remove all the unversioned files then update the repo. This remove all unversioned files including those in .bzrignore.

clean

This is same as fresh except that it doesn't remove the files mentioned in .bzrginore i.e, by running bzr clean-tree --ignore.

copy

A local bzr repository is maintained and the repo is copied to build directory for each build. Before each build the local bzr repo is updated then copied to build for next steps.

P4¶

class buildbot.steps.source.p4.P4¶

The P4 build step creates a Perforce client specification and performs an update.

from buildbot.steps.source.p4 import P4
factory.addStep(P4(p4port=p4port,
                   p4client=WithProperties('%(P4USER)s-%(slavename)s-%(buildername)s'),
                   p4user=p4user,
                   p4base='//depot',
                   p4viewspec=p4viewspec,
                   mode='incremental',
                   ))

You can specify the client spec in two different ways. You can use the p4base, p4branch, and (optionally) p4extra_views to build up the viewspec, or you can utilize the p4viewspec to specify the whole viewspec as a set of tuples.

Using p4viewspec will allow you to add lines such as:

//depot/branch/mybranch/...             //<p4client>/...
-//depot/branch/mybranch/notthisdir/... //<p4client>/notthisdir/...

If you specify p4viewspec and any of p4base, p4branch, and/or p4extra_views you will receive a configuration error exception.

p4base

A view into the Perforce depot without branch name or trailing "/...". Typically //depot/proj.

p4branch

(optional): A single string, which is appended to the p4base as follows: <p4base>/<p4branch>/... to form the first line in the viewspec

p4extra_views

(optional): a list of (depotpath, clientpath) tuples containing extra views to be mapped into the client specification. Both will have /... appended automatically. The client name and source directory will be prepended to the client path.

p4viewspec

This will override any p4branch, p4base, and/or p4extra_views specified. The viewspec will be an array of tuples as follows [('//depot/main/','')]

yields a viewspec with just

//depot/main/... //<p4client>/...

p4port

(optional): the host:port string describing how to get to the P4 Depot (repository), used as the -p argument for all p4 commands.

p4user

(optional): the Perforce user, used as the -u argument to all p4 commands.

p4passwd

(optional): the Perforce password, used as the -p argument to all p4 commands.

p4client

(optional): The name of the client to use. In mode='full' and mode='incremental', it's particularly important that a unique name is used for each checkout directory to avoid incorrect synchronization. For this reason, Python percent substitution will be performed on this value to replace %(slave)s with the slave name and %(builder)s with the builder name. The default is buildbot_%(slave)s_%(build)s.

p4line_end

(optional): The type of line ending handling P4 should use. This is added directly to the client spec's LineEnd property. The default is local.

Repo¶

class buildbot.steps.source.repo.Repo¶

The Repo build step performs a Repo init and sync.

It is a drop-in replacement for Repo (Slave-Side), which should not be used anymore for new and old projects.

The Repo step takes the following arguments:

manifestURL

(required): the URL at which the Repo's manifests source repository is available.

manifestBranch

(optional, defaults to master): the manifest repository branch on which repo will take its manifest. Corresponds to the -b argument to the repo init command.

manifestFile

(optional, defaults to default.xml): the manifest filename. Corresponds to the -m argument to the repo init command.

tarball

(optional, defaults to None): the repo tarball used for fast bootstrap. If not present the tarball will be created automatically after first sync. It is a copy of the .repo directory which contains all the Git objects. This feature helps to minimize network usage on very big projects with lots of slaves.

jobs

(optional, defaults to None): Number of projects to fetch simultaneously while syncing. Passed to repo sync subcommand with "-j".

syncAllBranches

(optional, defaults to False): renderable boolean to control whether repo syncs all branches. i.e. repo sync -c

updateTarballAge

(optional, defaults to "one week"): renderable to control the policy of updating of the tarball given properties Returns: max age of tarball in seconds, or None, if we want to skip tarball update The default value should be good trade off on size of the tarball, and update frequency compared to cost of tarball creation

repoDownloads

(optional, defaults to None): list of repo download commands to perform at the end of the Repo step each string in the list will be prefixed repo download, and run as is. This means you can include parameter in the string. e.g:

["-c project 1234/4"] will cherry-pick patchset 4 of patch 1234 in project project

["-f project 1234/4"] will enforce fast-forward on patchset 4 of patch 1234 in project project

class buildbot.steps.source.repo.RepoDownloadsFromProperties¶

RepoDownloadsFromProperties can be used as a renderable of the repoDownload parameter it will look in passed properties for string with following possible format:

repo download project change_number/patchset_number.

project change_number/patchset_number.

project/change_number/patchset_number.

All of these properties will be translated into a repo download. This feature allows integrators to build with several pending interdependent changes, which at the moment cannot be described properly in Gerrit, and can only be described by humans.

class buildbot.steps.source.repo.RepoDownloadsFromChangeSource¶

RepoDownloadsFromChangeSource can be used as a renderable of the repoDownload parameter

This rendereable integrates with GerritChangeSource, and will automatically use the repo download command of repo to download the additionnal changes introduced by a pending changeset.

Note

you can use the two above Rendereable in conjuction by using the class buildbot.process.properties.FlattenList

for example:

from buildbot.steps.source.repo import Repo, RepoDownloadsFromChangeSource,
from buildbot.steps.source.repo import RepoDownloadsFromProperties
from buildbot.process.properties import FlattenList

factory.addStep(Repo(manifestUrl='git://mygerrit.org/manifest.git',
                     repoDownloads=FlattenList([RepoDownloadsFromChangeSource(),
                                                RepoDownloadsFromProperties("repo_downloads")
                                                ]
                                               )
                     ))

Source Checkout (Slave-Side)¶

This section describes the more mature slave-side source steps. Where possible, new users should use the master-side source checkout steps, as the slave-side steps will be removed in a future version. See 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, one for each of the different source control system that Buildbot knows about. For a description of how Buildbot treats source control in general, see Version Control Systems.

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: specifies 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

As for 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.

repository

The name of this parameter might varies depending on the Source step you are running. The concept explained here is common to all steps and applies to repourl as well as for baseURL (when applicable). Buildbot, now being aware of the repository name via the change source, might in some cases not need the repository url. There are multiple way to pass it through to this step, those correspond to the type of the parameter given to this step:

None: In the case where no parameter is specified, the repository url will be taken exactly from the Change attribute. You are looking for that one if your ChangeSource step has all information about how to reach the Change.
string: The parameter might be a string, in this case, this string will be taken as the repository url, and nothing more. the value coming from the ChangeSource step will be forgotten.
format string: If the parameter is a string containing %s, then this the repository attribute from the Change will be place in place of the %s. This is useful when the change source knows where the repository resides locally, but don't know the scheme used to access it. For instance ssh://server/%s makes sense if the the repository attribute is the local path of the repository.
dict: In this case, the repository URL will be the value indexed by the repository attribute in the dict given as parameter.
callable: The callable given as parameter will take the repository attribute from the Change and its return value will be used as repository URL.

Note

this is quite similar to the mechanism used by the WebStatus for the changecommentlink, projects or repositories parameter.

timeout

Specifies the timeout for slave-side operations, in seconds. If your repositories are particularly large, then you may need to increase this value from its default of 1200 (20 minutes).

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.

Each VC system has a corresponding source checkout class: their arguments are described on the following pages.

CVS (Slave-Side)¶

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.

checkout_options

export_options

extra_options: a list of flags to be put after the verb in the CVS command. checkout_options is only used for checkout operations, export_options is only used for export operations, and extra_options is used for both.
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.

SVN (Slave-Side)¶

The SVN build step performs a Subversion checkout or update. There are two basic ways of setting up the checkout step, depending upon whether you are using multiple branches or not.

The most versatile way to create the SVN step is with the svnurl argument:

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.

The svnurl argument can be considered as a universal means to create the SVN step as it ignores the branch information in the SourceStamp.

Alternatively, if you are building from multiple branches, then you should preferentially create the SVN step with the baseURL and defaultBranch arguments instead:

baseURL

(required): this specifies the base repository URL, to which a branch name will be appended. It should probably end in a slash.

defaultBranch

(optional): this specifies the name of the branch to use when a Build does not provide one of its own. This will be appended to baseURL to create the string that will be passed to the svn checkout command.

It is possible to mix to have a mix of SVN steps that use either the svnurl or baseURL arguments but not both at the same time.

username

(optional): if specified, this will be passed to the svn binary with a --username option.

password

(optional): if specified, this will be passed to the svn binary with a --password option. The password itself will be suitably obfuscated in the logs.

extra_args

(optional): if specified, an array of strings that will be passed as extra arguments to the svn binary.

keep_on_purge

(optional): specific files or directories to keep between purges, like some build outputs that can be reused between builds.

ignore_ignores

(optional): when purging changes, don't use rules defined in svn:ignore properties and global-ignores in subversion/config.

always_purge

(optional): if set to True, always purge local changes before updating. This deletes unversioned files and reverts everything that would appear in a svn status.

depth

(optional): Specify depth argument to achieve sparse checkout. Only available if slave has Subversion 1.5 or higher.

If set to "empty" updates will not pull in any files or subdirectories not already present. If set to "files", updates will pull in any files not already present, but not directories. If set to "immediates", updates will pull in any files or subdirectories not already present, the new subdirectories will have depth: empty. If set to "infinity", updates will pull in any files or subdirectories not already present; the new subdirectories will have depth-infinity. Infinity is equivalent to SVN default update behavior, without specifying any depth argument.

If you are using branches, you must also make sure your ChangeSource will report the correct branch names.

Darcs (Slave-Side)¶

The Darcs build step performs a Darcs checkout or update.

Like SVN, this step can either be configured to always check out a specific tree, or set up to pull from a particular branch that gets specified separately for each build. Also like SVN, the repository URL given to Darcs is created by concatenating a baseURL with the branch name, and if no particular branch is requested, it uses a defaultBranch. The only difference in usage is that each potential Darcs repository URL must point to a fully-fledged repository, whereas SVN URLs usually point to sub-trees of the main Subversion repository. In other words, doing an SVN checkout of baseURL is legal, but silly, since you'd probably wind up with a copy of every single branch in the whole repository. Doing a Darcs checkout of baseURL is just plain wrong, since the parent directory of a collection of Darcs repositories is not itself a valid repository.

The Darcs step takes the following arguments:

repourl: (required unless baseURL is provided): the URL at which the Darcs source repository is available.
baseURL: (required unless repourl is provided): the base repository URL, to which a branch name will be appended. It should probably end in a slash.
defaultBranch: (allowed if and only if baseURL is provided): this specifies the name of the branch to use when a Build does not provide one of its own. This will be appended to baseURL to create the string that will be passed to the darcs get command.

Mercurial (Slave-Side)¶

The Mercurial build step performs a Mercurial (aka hg) checkout or update.

Branches are available in two modes: dirname like Darcs, or inrepo, which uses the repository internal branches. Make sure this setting matches your changehook, if you have that installed.

The Mercurial step takes the following arguments:

repourl: (required unless baseURL is provided): the URL at which the Mercurial source repository is available.
baseURL: (required unless repourl is provided): the base repository URL, to which a branch name will be appended. It should probably end in a slash.
defaultBranch: (allowed if and only if baseURL is provided): this specifies the name of the branch to use when a Build does not provide one of its own. This will be appended to baseURL to create the string that will be passed to the hg clone command.
branchType: either 'dirname' (default) or 'inrepo' depending on whether the branch name should be appended to the baseURL or the branch is a Mercurial named branch and can be found within the repourl.
clobberOnBranchChange: boolean, defaults to True. If set and using inrepos branches, clobber the tree at each branch change. Otherwise, just update to the branch.

Bzr (Slave-Side)¶

repourl: (required unless baseURL is provided): the URL at which the Bzr source repository is available.
baseURL: (required unless repourl is provided): the base repository URL, to which a branch name will be appended. It should probably end in a slash.
defaultBranch: (allowed if and only if baseURL is provided): this specifies the name of the branch to use when a Build does not provide one of its own. This will be appended to baseURL to create the string that will be passed to the bzr checkout command.
forceSharedRepo: (boolean, optional, defaults to False): If set to True, the working directory will be made into a bzr shared repository if it is not already. Shared repository greatly reduces the amount of history data that needs to be downloaded if not using update/copy mode, or if using update/copy mode with multiple branches.

P4 (Slave-Side)¶

The P4 (Slave-Side) build step creates a Perforce client specification and performs an update.

p4base: A view into the Perforce depot without branch name or trailing "...". Typically //depot/proj/.
defaultBranch: A branch name to append on build requests if none is specified. Typically trunk.
p4port: (optional): the host:port string describing how to get to the P4 Depot (repository), used as the -p argument for all p4 commands.
p4user: (optional): the Perforce user, used as the -u argument to all p4 commands.
p4passwd: (optional): the Perforce password, used as the -p argument to all p4 commands.
p4extra_views: (optional): a list of (depotpath, clientpath) tuples containing extra views to be mapped into the client specification. Both will have "/..." appended automatically. The client name and source directory will be prepended to the client path.
p4client: (optional): The name of the client to use. In mode='copy' and mode='update', it's particularly important that a unique name is used for each checkout directory to avoid incorrect synchronization. For this reason, Python percent substitution will be performed on this value to replace %(slave)s with the slave name and %(builder)s with the builder name. The default is buildbot_%(slave)s_%(build)s.
p4line_end: (optional): The type of line ending handling P4 should use. This is added directly to the client spec's LineEnd property. The default is local.

Git (Slave-Side)¶

The Git step takes the following arguments:

repourl: (required): the URL of the upstream Git repository.
branch: (optional): this specifies the name of the branch to use when a Build does not provide one of its own. If this this parameter is not specified, and the Build does not provide a branch, the master branch will be used.
ignore_ignores: (optional): when purging changes, don't use .gitignore and .git/info/exclude.
submodules: (optional): when initializing/updating a Git repository, this decides whether or not buildbot should consider Git submodules. Default: False.
reference: (optional): use the specified string as a path to a reference repository on the local machine. Git will try to grab objects from this path first instead of the main repository, if they exist.
shallow: (optional): instructs Git to attempt shallow clones (--depth 1). If the user/scheduler asks for a specific revision, this parameter is ignored.
progress: (optional): passes the (--progress) flag to (git fetch). This solves issues of long fetches being killed due to lack of output, but requires Git 1.7.2 or later.

This Source step integrates with GerritChangeSource, and will automatically use Gerrit's "virtual branch" (refs/changes/*) to download the additionnal changes introduced by a pending changeset.

Gerrit integration can be also triggered using forced build with gerrit_change property with value in format: change_number/patchset_number.

BitKeeper (Slave-Side)¶

The BK build step performs a BitKeeper checkout or update.

The BitKeeper step takes the following arguments:

repourl: (required unless baseURL is provided): the URL at which the BitKeeper source repository is available.
baseURL: (required unless repourl is provided): the base repository URL, to which a branch name will be appended. It should probably end in a slash.

Repo (Slave-Side)¶

class buildbot.steps.source.Repo¶

The Repo (Slave-Side) build step performs a Repo init and sync.

This step is obsolete and should not be used anymore. please use: Repo instead

The Repo step takes the following arguments:

manifest_url: (required): the URL at which the Repo's manifests source repository is available.
manifest_branch: (optional, defaults to master): the manifest repository branch on which repo will take its manifest. Corresponds to the -b argument to the repo init command.
manifest_file: (optional, defaults to default.xml): the manifest filename. Corresponds to the -m argument to the repo init command.
tarball: (optional, defaults to None): the repo tarball used for fast bootstrap. If not present the tarball will be created automatically after first sync. It is a copy of the .repo directory which contains all the Git objects. This feature helps to minimize network usage on very big projects.
jobs: (optional, defaults to None): Number of projects to fetch simultaneously while syncing. Passed to repo sync subcommand with "-j".

This Source step integrates with GerritChangeSource, and will automatically use the repo download command of repo to download the additionnal changes introduced by a pending changeset.

Gerrit integration can be also triggered using forced build with following properties: repo_d, repo_d[0-9], repo_download, repo_download[0-9] with values in format: project/change_number/patchset_number. All of these properties will be translated into a repo download. This feature allows integrators to build with several pending interdependent changes, which at the moment cannot be described properly in Gerrit, and can only be described by humans.

Monotone (Slave-Side)¶

The Monotone build step performs a Monotone, (aka mtn) checkout or update.

The Monotone step takes the following arguments:

repourl: the URL at which the Monotone source repository is available.
branch: this specifies the name of the branch to use when a Build does not provide one of its own.
progress: this is a boolean that has a pull from the repository use --ticker=dot instead of the default --ticker=none.

ShellCommand¶

Most interesting steps involve executing a process of some sort on the buildslave. The ShellCommand class handles this activity.

Several subclasses of ShellCommand are provided as starting points for common build steps.

Using ShellCommands¶

class buildbot.steps.shell.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 buildslave. All stdout/stderr is recorded into a LogFile. The step usually 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.

On Windows, commands are run via cmd.exe /c which works well. However, if you're running a batch file, the error level does not get propagated correctly unless you add 'call' before your batch file's name: cmd=['call', 'myfile.bat', ...].

The ShellCommand arguments are:

command

a list of strings (preferred) or single string (discouraged) which specifies the command to be run. A list of strings is preferred because it can be used directly as an argv array. Using a single string (with embedded spaces) requires the buildslave to pass the string to /bin/sh for interpretation, which raises all sorts of difficult questions about how to escape or interpret shell metacharacters.

If command contains nested lists (for example, from a properties substitution), then that list will be flattened before it is executed.

On the topic of shell metacharacters, note that in DOS the pipe character (|) is conditionally escaped (to ^|) when it occurs inside a more complex string in a list of strings. It remains unescaped when it occurs as part of a single string or as a lone pipe in a list of strings.

workdir

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 buildslave create-slave, Creating a buildslave) 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).

For example:

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
f.addStep(ShellCommand(command=["make", "test"],
                       workdir="build/tests"))

env

a dictionary of environment strings which will be added to the child command's environment. For example, to run tests with a different i18n language setting, you might use

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
f.addStep(ShellCommand(command=["make", "test"],
                       env={'LANG': 'fr_FR'}))

These variable settings will override any existing ones in the buildslave's environment or the environment specified in the Builder. The exception is PYTHONPATH, which is merged with (actually prepended to) any existing PYTHONPATH setting. The following example will prepend /home/buildbot/lib/python to any existing PYTHONPATH:

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
f.addStep(ShellCommand(
              command=["make", "test"],
              env={'PYTHONPATH': "/home/buildbot/lib/python"}))

To avoid the need of concatenating path together in the master config file, if the value is a list, it will be joined together using the right platform dependant separator.

Those variables support expansion so that if you just want to prepend /home/buildbot/bin to the PATH environment variable, you can do it by putting the value ${PATH} at the end of the value like in the example below. Variables that don't exist on the slave will be replaced by "".

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
f.addStep(ShellCommand(
              command=["make", "test"],
              env={'PATH': ["/home/buildbot/bin",
                            "${PATH}"]}))

Note that environment values must be strings (or lists that are turned into strings). In particular, numeric properties such as buildnumber must be substituted using Interpolate.

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.

usePTY

Should this command be run in a pty? The default is to observe the configuration of the client (Buildslave Options), but specifying True or False here will override the default. This option is not available on Windows.

In general, you do not want to use a pseudo-terminal. This is is only useful for running commands that require a terminal - for example, testing a command-line application that will only accept passwords read from a terminal. Using a pseudo-terminal brings lots of compatibility problems, and prevents Buildbot from distinguishing the standard error (red) and standard output (black) streams.

In previous versions, the advantage of using a pseudo-terminal was that grandchild processes were more likely to be cleaned up if the build was interrupted or times out. This occurred because using a pseudo-terminal incidentally puts the command into its own process group.

As of Buildbot-0.8.4, all commands are placed in process groups, and thus grandchild processes will be cleaned up properly.

logfiles

Sometimes commands will log interesting data to a local file, rather than emitting everything to stdout or stderr. For example, Twisted's trial command (which runs unit tests) only presents summary information to stdout, and puts the rest into a file named _trial_temp/test.log. It is often useful to watch these files as the command runs, rather than using /bin/cat to dump their contents afterwards.

The logfiles= argument allows you to collect data from these secondary logfiles in near-real-time, as the step is running. It accepts a dictionary which maps from a local Log name (which is how the log data is presented in the build results) to either a remote filename (interpreted relative to the build's working directory), or a dictionary of options. Each named file will be polled on a regular basis (every couple of seconds) as the build runs, and any new text will be sent over to the buildmaster.

If you provide a dictionary of options instead of a string, you must specify the filename key. You can optionally provide a follow key which is a boolean controlling whether a logfile is followed or concatenated in its entirety. Following is appropriate for logfiles to which the build step will append, where the pre-existing contents are not interesting. The default value for follow is False, which gives the same behavior as just providing a string filename.

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
f.addStep(ShellCommand(
              command=["make", "test"],
              logfiles={"triallog": "_trial_temp/test.log"}))

The above example will add a log named 'triallog' on the master, based on _trial_temp/test.log on the slave.

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
f.addStep(ShellCommand(
              command=["make", "test"],
              logfiles={"triallog": {"filename": "_trial_temp/test.log",
                   "follow": True,}}))

lazylogfiles

If set to True, logfiles will be tracked lazily, meaning that they will only be added when and if something is written to them. This can be used to suppress the display of empty or missing log files. The default is False.

timeout

if the command fails to produce any output for this many seconds, it is assumed to be locked up and will be killed. This defaults to 1200 seconds. Pass None to disable.

maxTime

if the command takes longer than this many seconds, it will be killed. This is disabled by default.

description

This will be used to describe the command (on the Waterfall display) while the command is still running. It should be a single imperfect-tense verb, like compiling or testing. The preferred form is a list of short strings, which allows the HTML displays to create narrower columns by emitting a <br> tag between each word. You may also provide a single string.

descriptionDone

This will be used to describe the command once it has finished. A simple noun like compile or tests should be used. Like description, this may either be a list of short strings or a single string.

If neither description nor descriptionDone are set, the actual command arguments will be used to construct the description. This may be a bit too wide to fit comfortably on the Waterfall display.

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
f.addStep(ShellCommand(command=["make", "test"],
                       description=["testing"],
                       descriptionDone=["tests"]))

descriptionSuffix

This is an optional suffix appended to the end of the description (ie, after description and descriptionDone). This can be used to distinguish between build steps that would display the same descriptions in the waterfall. This parameter may be set to list of short strings, a single string, or None.

For example, a builder might use the Compile step to build two different codebases. The descriptionSuffix could be set to projectFoo and projectBar, respectively for each step, which will result in the full descriptions compiling projectFoo and compiling projectBar to be shown in the waterfall.

logEnviron

If this option is True (the default), then the step's logfile will describe the environment variables on the slave. In situations where the environment is not relevant and is long, it may be easier to set logEnviron=False.

interruptSignal

If the command should be interrupted (either by buildmaster or timeout etc.), what signal should be sent to the process, specified by name. By default this is "KILL" (9). Specify "TERM" (15) to give the process a chance to cleanup. This functionality requires a 0.8.6 slave or newer.

initialStdin

If the command expects input on stdin, that can be supplied a a string with this parameter. This value should not be excessively large, as it is handled as a single string throughout Buildbot -- for example, do not pass the contents of a tarball with this parameter.

decodeRC

This is a dictionary that decodes exit codes into results value. e.g: {0:SUCCESS,1:FAILURE,2:WARNINGS}, will treat the exit code 2 as WARNINGS. The default is to treat just 0 as successful. ({0:SUCCESS}) any exit code not present in the dictionary will be treated as FAILURE

Configure¶

class buildbot.steps.shell.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. The arguments are identical to ShellCommand.

from buildbot.steps.shell import Configure
f.addStep(Configure())

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 warning messages, a summary log is created with any problems that were seen, and the step is marked as WARNINGS if any were discovered. Through the WarningCountingShellCommand superclass, the number of warnings is stored in a Build Property named warnings-count, which is accumulated over all Compile steps (so if two warnings are found in one step, and three are found in another step, the overall build will have a warnings-count property of 5). Each step can be optionally given a maximum number of warnings via the maxWarnCount parameter. If this limit is exceeded, the step will be marked as a failure.

The default regular expression used to detect a warning is '.*warning[: ].*' , which is fairly liberal and may cause false-positives. To use a different regexp, provide a warningPattern= argument, or use a subclass which sets the warningPattern attribute:

from buildbot.steps.shell import Compile
f.addStep(Compile(command=["make", "test"],
                  warningPattern="^Warning: "))

The warningPattern= can also be a pre-compiled Python regexp object: this makes it possible to add flags like re.I (to use case-insensitive matching).

Note that the compiled warningPattern will have its match method called, which is subtly different from a search. Your regular expression must match the from the beginning of the line. This means that to look for the word "warning" in the middle of a line, you will need to prepend '.*' to your regular expression.

The suppressionFile= argument can be specified as the (relative) path of a file inside the workdir defining warnings to be suppressed from the warning counting and log file. The file will be uploaded to the master from the slave before compiling, and any warning matched by a line in the suppression file will be ignored. This is useful to accept certain warnings (eg. in some special module of the source tree or in cases where the compiler is being particularly stupid), yet still be able to easily detect and fix the introduction of new warnings.

The file must contain one line per pattern of warnings to ignore. Empty lines and lines beginning with # are ignored. Other lines must consist of a regexp matching the file name, followed by a colon (:), followed by a regexp matching the text of the warning. Optionally this may be followed by another colon and a line number range. For example:

# Sample warning suppression file

mi_packrec.c : .*result of 32-bit shift implicitly converted to 64 bits.* : 560-600
DictTabInfo.cpp : .*invalid access to non-static.*
kernel_types.h : .*only defines private constructors and has no friends.* : 51

If no line number range is specified, the pattern matches the whole file; if only one number is given it matches only on that line.

The default warningPattern regexp only matches the warning text, so line numbers and file names are ignored. To enable line number and file name matching, provide a different regexp and provide a function (callable) as the argument of warningExtractor=. The function is called with three arguments: the BuildStep object, the line in the log file with the warning, and the SRE_Match object of the regexp search for warningPattern. It should return a tuple (filename, linenumber, warning_test). For example:

f.addStep(Compile(command=["make"],
                  warningPattern="^(.\*?):([0-9]+): [Ww]arning: (.\*)$",
                  warningExtractor=Compile.warnExtractFromRegexpGroups,
                  suppressionFile="support-files/compiler_warnings.supp"))

(Compile.warnExtractFromRegexpGroups is a pre-defined function that returns the filename, linenumber, and text from groups (1,2,3) of the regexp match).

In projects with source files in multiple directories, it is possible to get full path names for file names matched in the suppression file, as long as the build command outputs the names of directories as they are entered into and left again. For this, specify regexps for the arguments directoryEnterPattern= and directoryLeavePattern=. The directoryEnterPattern= regexp should return the name of the directory entered into in the first matched group. The defaults, which are suitable for .. GNU Make, are these:

..     directoryEnterPattern = "make.*: Entering directory [\"`'](.*)['`\"]"
..     directoryLeavePattern = "make.*: Leaving directory"

(TODO: this step needs to be extended to look for GCC error messages as well, and collect them into a separate logfile, along with the source code filenames involved).

Visual C++¶

These steps are meant to handle compilation using Microsoft compilers. VC++ 6-11 (aka Visual Studio 2003-2012 and VCExpress9) are supported via calling devenv. VS2012 as well as Windows Driver Kit 8 are supported via the new MsBuild step. These steps will take care of setting up a clean compilation environment, parsing the generated output in real time and delivering as detailed as possible information about the compilation executed.

All of the classes are in buildbot.steps.vstudio. The available classes are:

VC6

VC7

VC8

VC9

VC10

VC11

VS2003

VS2005

VS2008

VS2010

VS2012

VCExpress9

MsBuild

The available constructor arguments are

mode: The mode default to rebuild, which means that first all the remaining object files will be cleaned by the compiler. The alternate values are build, where only the updated files will be recompiled, and clean, where the current build files are removed and no compilation occurs.
projectfile: This is a mandatory argument which specifies the project file to be used during the compilation.
config: This argument defaults to release an gives to the compiler the configuration to use.
installdir: This is the place where the compiler is installed. The default value is compiler specific and is the default place where the compiler is installed.
useenv: This boolean parameter, defaulting to False instruct the compiler to use its own settings or the one defined through the environment variables PATH, INCLUDE, and LIB. If any of the INCLUDE or LIB parameter is defined, this parameter automatically switches to True.
PATH: This is a list of path to be added to the PATH environment variable. The default value is the one defined in the compiler options.
INCLUDE: This is a list of path where the compiler will first look for include files. Then comes the default paths defined in the compiler options.
LIB: This is a list of path where the compiler will first look for libraries. Then comes the default path defined in the compiler options.
arch: That one is only available with the class VS2005 (VC8). It gives the target architecture of the built artifact. It defaults to x86 and does not apply to MsBuild. Please see platform below.
project: This gives the specific project to build from within a workspace. It defaults to building all projects. This is useful for building cmake generate projects.
platform: This is a mandatory argument for MsBuild specifying the target platform such as 'Win32', 'x64' or 'Vista Debug'. The last one is an example of driver targets that appear once Windows Driver Kit 8 is installed.

Here is an example on how to drive compilation with Visual Studio 2010:

from buildbot.steps.VisualStudio import VS2010

f.addStep(
    VS2010(projectfile="project.sln", config="release",
        arch="x64", mode="build",
           INCLUDE=[r'C:\3rd-pary\libmagic\include'],
           LIB=[r'C:\3rd-party\libmagic\lib-x64']))

Here is a similar example using "msbuild":

from buildbot.steps.VisualStudio import MsBuild

# Build one project in Release mode for Win32
f.addStep(
    MsBuild(projectfile="trunk.sln", config="Release", platform="Win32",
            workdir="trunk",
            project="tools\\protoc"))

# Build the entire solution in Debug mode for x64
f.addStep(
    MsBuild(projectfile="trunk.sln", config='Debug', platform='x64',
            workdir="trunk"))

Test¶

from buildbot.steps.shell import Test
f.addStep(Test())

This is meant to handle unit tests. The default command is make test, and the warnOnFailure flag is set. The other arguments are identical to ShellCommand.

TreeSize¶

from buildbot.steps.shell import TreeSize
f.addStep(TreeSize())

This is a simple command that uses the du tool to measure the size of the code tree. It puts the size (as a count of 1024-byte blocks, aka 'KiB' or 'kibibytes') on the step's status text, and sets a build property named tree-size-KiB with the same value. All arguments are identical to ShellCommand.

PerlModuleTest¶

from buildbot.steps.shell import PerlModuleTest
f.addStep(PerlModuleTest())

This is a simple command that knows how to run tests of perl modules. It parses the output to determine the number of tests passed and failed and total number executed, saving the results for later query. The command is prove --lib lib -r t, although this can be overridden with the command argument. All other arguments are identical to those for ShellCommand.

MTR (mysql-test-run)¶

The MTR class is a subclass of Test. It is used to run test suites using the mysql-test-run program, as used in MySQL, Drizzle, MariaDB, and MySQL storage engine plugins.

The shell command to run the test suite is specified in the same way as for the Test class. The MTR class will parse the output of running the test suite, and use the count of tests executed so far to provide more accurate completion time estimates. Any test failures that occur during the test are summarized on the Waterfall Display.

Server error logs are added as additional log files, useful to debug test failures.

Optionally, data about the test run and any test failures can be inserted into a database for further analysis and report generation. To use this facility, create an instance of twisted.enterprise.adbapi.ConnectionPool with connections to the database. The necessary tables can be created automatically by setting autoCreateTables to True, or manually using the SQL found in the mtrlogobserver.py source file.

One problem with specifying a database is that each reload of the configuration will get a new instance of ConnectionPool (even if the connection parameters are the same). To avoid that Buildbot thinks the builder configuration has changed because of this, use the process.mtrlogobserver.EqConnectionPool subclass of ConnectionPool, which implements an equiality operation that avoids this problem.

Example use:

from buildbot.process.mtrlogobserver import MTR, EqConnectionPool
myPool = EqConnectionPool("MySQLdb", "host", "buildbot", "password", "db")
myFactory.addStep(MTR(workdir="mysql-test", dbpool=myPool,
                      command=["perl", "mysql-test-run.pl", "--force"]))

The MTR step's arguments are:

textLimit: Maximum number of test failures to show on the waterfall page (to not flood the page in case of a large number of test failures. Defaults to 5.
testNameLimit: Maximum length of test names to show unabbreviated in the waterfall page, to avoid excessive column width. Defaults to 16.
parallel: Value of --parallel option used for mysql-test-run.pl (number of processes used to run the test suite in parallel). Defaults to 4. This is used to determine the number of server error log files to download from the slave. Specifying a too high value does not hurt (as nonexisting error logs will be ignored), however if using --parallel value greater than the default it needs to be specified, or some server error logs will be missing.
dbpool: An instance of twisted.enterprise.adbapi.ConnectionPool, or None. Defaults to None. If specified, results are inserted into the database using the ConnectionPool.
autoCreateTables: Boolean, defaults to False. If True (and dbpool is specified), the necessary database tables will be created automatically if they do not exist already. Alternatively, the tables can be created manually from the SQL statements found in the mtrlogobserver.py source file.
test_type: Short string that will be inserted into the database in the row for the test run. Defaults to the empty string, but can be specified to identify different types of test runs.
test_info: Descriptive string that will be inserted into the database in the row for the test run. Defaults to the empty string, but can be specified as a user-readable description of this particular test run.
mtr_subdir: The subdirectory in which to look for server error log files. Defaults to mysql-test, which is usually correct. Interpolate is supported.

SubunitShellCommand¶

class buildbot.steps.subunit.SubunitShellCommand¶

This buildstep is similar to ShellCommand, except that it runs the log content through a subunit filter to extract test and failure counts.

from buildbot.steps.subunit import SubunitShellCommand
f.addStep(SubunitShellCommand(command="make test"))

This runs make test and filters it through subunit. The 'tests' and 'test failed' progress metrics will now accumulate test data from the test run.

If failureOnNoTests is True, this step will fail if no test is run. By default failureOnNoTests is False.

Slave Filesystem Steps¶

Here are some buildsteps for manipulating the slave's filesystem.

FileExists¶

This step will assert that a given file exists, failing if it does not. The filename can be specified with a property.

from buildbot.steps.slave import FileExists
f.addStep(FileExists(file='test_data'))

This step requires slave version 0.8.4 or later.

CopyDirectory¶

This command copies a directory on the slave.

from buildbot.steps.slave import CopyDirectory
f.addStep(CopyDirectory(src="build/data", dest="tmp/data"))

This step requires slave version 0.8.5 or later.

The CopyDirectory step takes the following arguments:

timeout: if the copy command fails to produce any output for this many seconds, it is assumed to be locked up and will be killed. This defaults to 120 seconds. Pass None to disable.
maxTime: if the command takes longer than this many seconds, it will be killed. This is disabled by default.

RemoveDirectory¶

This command recursively deletes a directory on the slave.

from buildbot.steps.slave import RemoveDirectory
f.addStep(RemoveDirectory(dir="build/build"))

This step requires slave version 0.8.4 or later.

MakeDirectory¶

This command creates a directory on the slave.

from buildbot.steps.slave import MakeDirectory
f.addStep(MakeDirectory(dir="build/build"))

This step requires slave version 0.8.5 or later.

Python BuildSteps¶

Here are some BuildSteps that are specifically useful for projects implemented in Python.

BuildEPYDoc¶

class buildbot.steps.python.BuildEPYDoc¶

epydoc is a tool for generating API documentation for Python modules from their docstrings. It reads all the .py files from your source tree, processes the docstrings therein, and creates a large tree of .html files (or a single .pdf file).

The BuildEPYDoc step will run epydoc to produce this API documentation, and will count the errors and warnings from its output.

You must supply the command line to be used. The default is make epydocs, which assumes that your project has a Makefile with an epydocs target. You might wish to use something like epydoc -o apiref source/PKGNAME instead. You might also want to add --pdf to generate a PDF file instead of a large tree of HTML files.

The API docs are generated in-place in the build tree (under the workdir, in the subdirectory controlled by the -o argument). To make them useful, you will probably have to copy them to somewhere they can be read. A command like rsync -ad apiref/ dev.example.com:~public_html/current-apiref/ might be useful. You might instead want to bundle them into a tarball and publish it in the same place where the generated install tarball is placed.

from buildbot.steps.python import BuildEPYDoc
f.addStep(BuildEPYDoc(command=["epydoc", "-o", "apiref", "source/mypkg"]))

PyFlakes¶

class buildbot.steps.python.PyFlakes¶

PyFlakes is a tool to perform basic static analysis of Python code to look for simple errors, like missing imports and references of undefined names. It is like a fast and simple form of the C lint program. Other tools (like pychecker) provide more detailed results but take longer to run.

The PyFlakes step will run pyflakes and count the various kinds of errors and warnings it detects.

You must supply the command line to be used. The default is make pyflakes, which assumes you have a top-level Makefile with a pyflakes target. You might want to use something like pyflakes . or pyflakes src.

from buildbot.steps.python import PyFlakes
f.addStep(PyFlakes(command=["pyflakes", "src"]))

Sphinx¶

class buildbot.steps.python.Sphinx¶

Sphinx is the Python Documentation Generator. It uses RestructuredText as input format.

The Sphinx step will run sphinx-build or any other program specified in its sphinx argument and count the various warnings and error it detects.

from buildbot.steps.python import Sphinx
f.addStep(Sphinx(sphinx_builddir="_build"))

This step takes the following arguments:

sphinx_builddir: (required) Name of the directory where the documentation will be generated.
sphinx_sourcedir: (optional, defaulting to .), Name the directory where the conf.py file will be found
sphinx_builder: (optional) Indicates the builder to use.
sphinx: (optional, defaulting to sphinx-build) Indicates the executable to run.
tags: (optional) List of tags to pass to sphinx-build
defines: (optional) Dictionary of defines to overwrite values of the conf.py file.
mode: (optional) String, one of full or incremental (the default). If set to full, indicates to Sphinx to rebuild everything without re-using the previous build results.

PyLint¶

Similarly, the PyLint step will run pylint and analyze the results.

You must supply the command line to be used. There is no default.

from buildbot.steps.python import PyLint
f.addStep(PyLint(command=["pylint", "src"]))

Trial¶

class buildbot.steps.python_twisted.Trial¶

This step runs a unit test suite using trial, a unittest-like testing framework that is a component of Twisted Python. Trial is used to implement Twisted's own unit tests, and is the unittest-framework of choice for many projects that use Twisted internally.

Projects that use trial typically have all their test cases in a 'test' subdirectory of their top-level library directory. For example, for a package petmail, the tests might be in petmail/test/test_*.py. More complicated packages (like Twisted itself) may have multiple test directories, like twisted/test/test_*.py for the core functionality and twisted/mail/test/test_*.py for the email-specific tests.

To run trial tests manually, you run the trial executable and tell it where the test cases are located. The most common way of doing this is with a module name. For petmail, this might look like trial petmail.test, which would locate all the test_*.py files under petmail/test/, running every test case it could find in them. Unlike the unittest.py that comes with Python, it is not necessary to run the test_foo.py as a script; you always let trial do the importing and running. The step's tests` parameter controls which tests trial will run: it can be a string or a list of strings.

To find the test cases, the Python search path must allow something like import petmail.test to work. For packages that don't use a separate top-level lib directory, PYTHONPATH=. will work, and will use the test cases (and the code they are testing) in-place. PYTHONPATH=build/lib or PYTHONPATH=build/lib.somearch are also useful when you do a python setup.py build step first. The testpath attribute of this class controls what PYTHONPATH is set to before running trial.

Trial has the ability, through the --testmodule flag, to run only the set of test cases named by special test-case-name tags in source files. We can get the list of changed source files from our parent Build and provide them to trial, thus running the minimal set of test cases needed to cover the Changes. This is useful for quick builds, especially in trees with a lot of test cases. The testChanges parameter controls this feature: if set, it will override tests.

The trial executable itself is typically just trial, and is typically found in the shell search path. It can be overridden with the trial parameter. This is useful for Twisted's own unittests, which want to use the copy of bin/trial that comes with the sources.

To influence the version of Python being used for the tests, or to add flags to the command, set the python parameter. This can be a string (like python2.2) or a list (like ['python2.3', '-Wall']).

Trial creates and switches into a directory named _trial_temp/ before running the tests, and sends the twisted log (which includes all exceptions) to a file named test.log. This file will be pulled up to the master where it can be seen as part of the status output.

from buildbot.steps.python_twisted import Trial
f.addStep(Trial(tests='petmail.test'))

Trial has the ability to run tests on several workers in parallel (beginning with Twisted 12.3.0). Set jobs to the number of workers you want to run. Note that running trial in this way will create multiple log files (named test.N.log, err.N.log and out.N.log starting with N=0) rather than a single test.log.

This step takes the following arguments:

jobs: (optional) Number of slave-resident workers to use when running the tests. Defaults to 1 worker. Only works with Twisted>=12.3.0.

RemovePYCs¶

class buildbot.steps.python_twisted.RemovePYCs¶

This is a simple built-in step that will remove .pyc files from the workdir. This is useful in builds that update their source (and thus do not automatically delete .pyc files) but where some part of the build process is dynamically searching for Python modules. Notably, trial has a bad habit of finding old test modules.

from buildbot.steps.python_twisted import RemovePYCs
f.addStep(RemovePYCs())

Transferring Files¶

class buildbot.steps.transfer.FileUpload¶

class buildbot.steps.transfer.FileDownload¶

Most of the work involved in a build will take place on the buildslave. But occasionally it is useful to do some work on the buildmaster side. The most basic way to involve the buildmaster is simply to move a file from the slave to the master, or vice versa. There are a pair of steps named FileUpload and FileDownload to provide this functionality. FileUpload moves a file up to the master, while FileDownload moves a file down from the master.

As an example, let's assume that there is a step which produces an HTML file within the source tree that contains some sort of generated project documentation. We want to move this file to the buildmaster, into a ~/public_html directory, so it can be visible to developers. This file will wind up in the slave-side working directory under the name docs/reference.html. We want to put it into the master-side ~/public_html/ref.html, and add a link to the HTML status to the uploaded file.

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
from buildbot.steps.transfer import FileUpload

f.addStep(ShellCommand(command=["make", "docs"]))
f.addStep(FileUpload(slavesrc="docs/reference.html",
                     masterdest="/home/bb/public_html/ref.html",
                     url="http://somesite/~buildbot/ref.html"))

The masterdest= argument will be passed to os.path.expanduser, so things like ~ will be expanded properly. Non-absolute paths will be interpreted relative to the buildmaster's base directory. Likewise, the slavesrc= argument will be expanded and interpreted relative to the builder's working directory.

Note

The copied file will have the same permissions on the master as on the slave, look at the mode= parameter to set it differently.

To move a file from the master to the slave, use the FileDownload command. For example, let's assume that some step requires a configuration file that, for whatever reason, could not be recorded in the source code repository or generated on the buildslave side:

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
from buildbot.steps.transfer import FileDownload

f.addStep(FileDownload(mastersrc="~/todays_build_config.txt",
                       slavedest="build_config.txt"))
f.addStep(ShellCommand(command=["make", "config"]))

Like FileUpload, the mastersrc= argument is interpreted relative to the buildmaster's base directory, and the slavedest= argument is relative to the builder's working directory. If the buildslave is running in ~buildslave, and the builder's builddir is something like tests-i386, then the workdir is going to be ~buildslave/tests-i386/build, and a slavedest= of foo/bar.html will get put in ~buildslave/tests-i386/build/foo/bar.html. Both of these commands will create any missing intervening directories.

Other Parameters¶

The maxsize= argument lets you set a maximum size for the file to be transferred. This may help to avoid surprises: transferring a 100MB coredump when you were expecting to move a 10kB status file might take an awfully long time. The blocksize= argument controls how the file is sent over the network: larger blocksizes are slightly more efficient but also consume more memory on each end, and there is a hard-coded limit of about 640kB.

The mode= argument allows you to control the access permissions of the target file, traditionally expressed as an octal integer. The most common value is probably 0755, which sets the x executable bit on the file (useful for shell scripts and the like). The default value for mode= is None, which means the permission bits will default to whatever the umask of the writing process is. The default umask tends to be fairly restrictive, but at least on the buildslave you can make it less restrictive with a --umask command-line option at creation time (Buildslave Options).

The keepstamp= argument is a boolean that, when True, forces the modified and accessed time of the destination file to match the times of the source file. When False (the default), the modified and accessed times of the destination file are set to the current time on the buildmaster.

The url= argument allows you to specify an url that will be displayed in the HTML status. The title of the url will be the name of the item transferred (directory for DirectoryUpload or file for FileUpload). This allows the user to add a link to the uploaded item if that one is uploaded to an accessible place.

Transfering Directories¶

class buildbot.steps.transfer.DirectoryUpload¶

To transfer complete directories from the buildslave to the master, there is a BuildStep named DirectoryUpload. It works like FileUpload, just for directories. However it does not support the maxsize, blocksize and mode arguments. As an example, let's assume an generated project documentation, which consists of many files (like the output of doxygen or epydoc). We want to move the entire documentation to the buildmaster, into a ~/public_html/docs directory, and add a link to the uploaded documentation on the HTML status page. On the slave-side the directory can be found under docs:

from buildbot.steps.shell import ShellCommand
from buildbot.steps.transfer import DirectoryUpload

f.addStep(ShellCommand(command=["make", "docs"]))
f.addStep(DirectoryUpload(slavesrc="docs",
                          masterdest="~/public_html/docs",
                          url="~buildbot/docs"))

The DirectoryUpload step will create all necessary directories and transfers empty directories, too.

The maxsize and blocksize parameters are the same as for FileUpload, although note that the size of the transferred data is implementation-dependent, and probably much larger than you expect due to the encoding used (currently tar).

The optional compress argument can be given as 'gz' or 'bz2' to compress the datastream.

Note

The permissions on the copied files will be the same on the master as originally on the slave, see buildslave create-slave --umask to change the default one.

Transfering Strings¶

class buildbot.steps.transfer.StringDownload¶

class buildbot.steps.transfer.JSONStringDownload¶

class buildbot.steps.transfer.JSONPropertiesDownload¶

Sometimes it is useful to transfer a calculated value from the master to the slave. Instead of having to create a temporary file and then use FileDownload, you can use one of the string download steps.

from buildbot.steps.transfer import StringDownload
f.addStep(StringDownload(Interpolate("%(src::branch)s-%(prop:got_revision)s\n"),
        slavedest="buildid.txt"))

StringDownload works just like FileDownload except it takes a single argument, s, representing the string to download instead of a mastersrc argument.

from buildbot.steps.transfer import JSONStringDownload
buildinfo = { branch: Property('branch'), got_revision: Property('got_revision') }
f.addStep(JSONStringDownload(buildinfo, slavedest="buildinfo.json"))

JSONStringDownload is similar, except it takes an o argument, which must be JSON serializable, and transfers that as a JSON-encoded string to the slave.

from buildbot.steps.transfer import JSONPropertiesDownload
f.addStep(JSONPropertiesDownload(slavedest="build-properties.json"))

JSONPropertiesDownload transfers a json-encoded string that represents a dictionary where properties maps to a dictionary of build property name to property value; and sourcestamp represents the build's sourcestamp.

Running Commands on the Master¶

class buildbot.steps.master.MasterShellCommand¶

Occasionally, it is useful to execute some task on the master, for example to create a directory, deploy a build result, or trigger some other centralized processing. This is possible, in a limited fashion, with the MasterShellCommand step.

This step operates similarly to a regular ShellCommand, but executes on the master, instead of the slave. To be clear, the enclosing Build object must still have a slave object, just as for any other step -- only, in this step, the slave does not do anything.

In this example, the step renames a tarball based on the day of the week.

from buildbot.steps.transfer import FileUpload
from buildbot.steps.master import MasterShellCommand

f.addStep(FileUpload(slavesrc="widgetsoft.tar.gz",
                     masterdest="/var/buildoutputs/widgetsoft-new.tar.gz"))
f.addStep(MasterShellCommand(command="""
    cd /var/buildoutputs;
    mv widgetsoft-new.tar.gz widgetsoft-`date +%a`.tar.gz"""))

Note

By default, this step passes a copy of the buildmaster's environment variables to the subprocess. To pass an explicit environment instead, add an env={..} argument.

Environment variables constructed using the env argument support expansion so that if you just want to prepend /home/buildbot/bin to the PATH environment variable, you can do it by putting the value ${PATH} at the end of the value like in the example below. Variables that don't exist on the master will be replaced by "".

from buildbot.steps.master import MasterShellCommand
f.addStep(MasterShellCommand(
              command=["make", "www"],
              env={'PATH': ["/home/buildbot/bin",
                            "${PATH}"]}))

Note that environment values must be strings (or lists that are turned into strings). In particular, numeric properties such as buildnumber must be substituted using Interpolate.

interruptSignal: (optional) Signal to use to end the process, if the step is interrupted.

LogRenderable¶

class buildbot.steps.master.LogRenderable¶

This build step takes content which can be renderable and logs it in a pretty-printed format. It can be useful for debugging properties during a build.

Setting Properties¶

These steps set properties on the master based on information from the slave.

SetProperty¶

class buildbot.steps.master.SetProperty¶

SetProperty takes two arguments of property and value where the value is to be assigned to the property key. It is usually called with the value argument being specifed as a Interpolate object which allows the value to be built from other property values:

from buildbot.steps.master import SetProperty
from buildbot.process.properties import Interpolate
f.addStep(SetProperty(property="SomeProperty",
    value=Interpolate("sch=%(prop:scheduler)s, slave=%(prop:slavename)s")))

SetPropertyFromCommand¶

class buildbot.steps.shell.SetPropertyFromCommand¶

This buildstep is similar to ShellCommand, except that it captures the output of the command into a property. It is usually used like this:

from buildbot.steps import shell
f.addStep(shell.SetPropertyFromCommand(command="uname -a", property="uname"))

This runs uname -a and captures its stdout, stripped of leading and trailing whitespace, in the property uname. To avoid stripping, add strip=False.

The property argument can be specified as a Interpolate object, allowing the property name to be built from other property values.

The more advanced usage allows you to specify a function to extract properties from the command output. Here you can use regular expressions, string interpolation, or whatever you would like. In this form, extract_fn should be passed, and not Property. The extract_fn function is called with three arguments: the exit status of the command, its standard output as a string, and its standard error as a string. It should return a dictionary containing all new properties.

def glob2list(rc, stdout, stderr):
    jpgs = [ l.strip() for l in stdout.split('\n') ]
    return { 'jpgs' : jpgs }
f.addStep(SetPropertyFromCommand(command="ls -1 *.jpg", extract_fn=glob2list))

Note that any ordering relationship of the contents of stdout and stderr is lost. For example, given

f.addStep(SetPropertyFromCommand(
    command="echo output1; echo error >&2; echo output2",
    extract_fn=my_extract))

Then my_extract will see stdout="output1\noutput2\n" and stderr="error\n".

class buildbot.steps.slave.SetPropertiesFromEnv¶

SetPropertiesFromEnv¶

Buildbot slaves (later than version 0.8.3) provide their environment variables to the master on connect. These can be copied into Buildbot properties with the SetPropertiesFromEnv step. Pass a variable or list of variables in the variables parameter, then simply use the values as properties in a later step.

Note that on Windows, environment variables are case-insensitive, but Buildbot property names are case sensitive. The property will have exactly the variable name you specify, even if the underlying environment variable is capitalized differently. If, for example, you use variables=['Tmp'], the result will be a property named Tmp, even though the environment variable is displayed as TMP in the Windows GUI.

from buildbot.steps.slave import SetPropertiesFromEnv
from buildbot.steps.shell import Compile

f.addStep(SetPropertiesFromEnv(variables=["SOME_JAVA_LIB_HOME", "JAVAC"]))
f.addStep(Compile(commands=[Interpolate("%(prop:JAVAC)s"), "-cp", Interpolate("%(prop:SOME_JAVA_LIB_HOME)s")))

Note that this step requires that the Buildslave be at least version 0.8.3. For previous versions, no environment variables are available (the slave environment will appear to be empty).

Triggering Schedulers¶

The counterpart to the Triggerable described in section Triggerable is the Trigger build step:

from buildbot.steps.trigger import Trigger
f.addStep(Trigger(schedulerNames=['build-prep'],
                  waitForFinish=True,
                  updateSourceStamp=True,
                  set_properties={ 'quick' : False })

The schedulerNames= argument lists the Triggerable schedulers that should be triggered when this step is executed. Note that it is possible, but not advisable, to create a cycle where a build continually triggers itself, because the schedulers are specified by name.

If waitForFinish is True, then the step will not finish until all of the builds from the triggered schedulers have finished. Hyperlinks are added to the waterfall and the build detail web pages for each triggered build. If this argument is False (the default) or not given, then the buildstep succeeds immediately after triggering the schedulers.

The SourceStamps to use for the triggered build are controlled by the arguments updateSourceStamp, alwaysUseLatest, and sourceStamps. If updateSourceStamp is True (the default), then step updates the SourceStamp`s given to the :bb:sched:`Triggerable schedulers to include got_revision (the revision actually used in this build) as revision (the revision to use in the triggered builds). This is useful to ensure that all of the builds use exactly the same SourceStamp`s, even if other :class:`Changes have occurred while the build was running. If updateSourceStamp is False (and neither of the other arguments are specified), then the exact same SourceStamps are used. If alwaysUseLatest is True, then no SourceStamps are given, corresponding to using the latest revisions of the repositories specified in the Source steps. This is useful if the triggered builds use to a different source repository. The argument sourceStamps accepts a list of dictionaries containing the keys branch, revision, repository, project, and optionally patch_level, patch_body, patch_subdir, patch_author and patch_comment and creates the corresponding SourceStamps. If only one sourceStamp has to be specified then the argument sourceStamp can be used for a dictionary containing the keys mentioned above. The arguments updateSourceStamp, alwaysUseLatest, and sourceStamp can be specified using properties.

The set_properties parameter allows control of the properties that are passed to the triggered scheduler. The parameter takes a dictionary mapping property names to values. You may use Interpolate here to dynamically construct new property values. For the simple case of copying a property, this might look like

set_properties={"my_prop1" : Property("my_prop1")}

The copy_properties parameter, given a list of properties to copy into the new build request, has been deprecated in favor of explicit use of set_properties.

RPM-Related Steps¶

These steps work with RPMs and spec files.

RpmBuild¶

The RpmBuild step builds RPMs based on a spec file:

from buildbot.steps.package.rpm import RpmBuild
f.addStep(RpmBuild(specfile="proj.spec",
        dist='.el5'))

The step takes the following parameters

specfile: The .spec file to build from
topdir: Definition for _topdir, defaulting to the workdir.
builddir: Definition for _builddir, defaulting to the workdir.
rpmdir: Definition for _rpmdir, defaulting to the workdir.
sourcedir: Definition for _sourcedir, defaulting to the workdir.
srcrpmdir: Definition for _srcrpmdir, defaulting to the workdir.
dist: Distribution to build, used as the definition for _dist.
autoRelease: If true, use the auto-release mechanics.
vcsRevision: If true, use the version-control revision mechanics. This uses the got_revision property to determine the revision and define _revision. Note that this will not work with multi-codebase builds.

RpmLint¶

The RpmLint step checks for common problems in RPM packages or spec files:

from buildbot.steps.package.rpm import RpmLint
f.addStep(RpmLint())

The step takes the following parameters

fileloc: The file or directory to check. In case of a directory, it is recursively searched for RPMs and spec files to check.
config: Path to a rpmlint config file. This is passed as the user configuration file if present.

Mock Steps¶

Mock (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Projects/Mock) creates chroots and builds packages in them. It populates the changeroot with a basic system and the packages listed as build requirement. The type of chroot to build is specified with the root parameter. To use mock your buildbot user must be added to the mock group.

MockBuildSRPM Step¶

The MockBuildSRPM step builds a SourceRPM based on a spec file and optionally a source directory:

from buildbot.steps.package.rpm import MockBuildSRPM
f.addStep(MockBuildSRPM(root='default', spec='mypkg.spec'))

The step takes the following parameters

root: Use chroot configuration defined in /etc/mock/<root>.cfg.
resultdir: The directory where the logfiles and the SourceRPM are written to.
spec: Build the SourceRPM from this spec file.
sources: Path to the directory containing the sources, defaulting to ..

MockRebuild Step¶

The MockRebuild step rebuilds a SourceRPM package:

from buildbot.steps.package.rpm import MockRebuild
f.addStep(MockRebuild(root='default', spec='mypkg-1.0-1.src.rpm'))

The step takes the following parameters

root: Uses chroot configuration defined in /etc/mock/<root>.cfg.
resultdir: The directory where the logfiles and the SourceRPM are written to.
srpm: The path to the SourceRPM to rebuild.

Debian Build Steps¶

DebPbuilder¶

The DebPbuilder step builds Debian packages within a chroot built by pbuilder. It populates the changeroot with a basic system and the packages listed as build requirement. The type of chroot to build is specified with the distribution, distribution and mirror parameter. To use pbuilder your buildbot must have the right to run pbuilder as root through sudo.

from buildbot.steps.package.deb.pbuilder import DebPbuilder
f.addStep(DebPbuilder())

The step takes the following parameters

architecture: Architecture to build chroot for.
distribution: Name, or nickname, of the distribution. Defaults to 'stable'.
basetgz: Path of the basetgz to use for building.
mirror: URL of the mirror used to download the packages from.
extrapackages: List if packages to install in addition to the base system.
keyring: Path to a gpg keyring to verify the downloaded packages. This is necessary if you build for a foreign distribution.
components: Repos to activate for chroot building.

DebCowbuilder¶

The DebCowbuilder step is a subclass of DebPbuilder, which use cowbuilder instead of pbuilder.

DebLintian¶

The DebLintian step checks a build .deb for bugs and policy violations. The packages or changes file to test is specified in fileloc

from buildbot.steps.package.deb.lintian import DebLintian
f.addStep(DebLintian(fileloc=Interpolate("%(prop:deb-changes)s")))

Miscellaneous BuildSteps¶

A number of steps do not fall into any particular category.

HLint¶

The HLint step runs Twisted Lore, a lint-like checker over a set of .xhtml files. Any deviations from recommended style is flagged and put in the output log.

The step looks at the list of changes in the build to determine which files to check - it does not check all files. It specifically excludes any .xhtml files in the top-level sandbox/ directory.

The step takes a single, optional, parameter: python. This specifies the Python executable to use to run Lore.

from buildbot.steps.python_twisted import HLint
f.addStep(HLint())

MaxQ¶

MaxQ (http://maxq.tigris.org/) is a web testing tool that allows you to record HTTP sessions and play them back. The MaxQ step runs this framework.

from buildbot.steps.maxq import MaxQ
f.addStep(MaxQ(testdir='tests/'))

The single argument, testdir, specifies where the tests should be run. This directory will be passed to the run_maxq.py command, and the results analyzed.

Interlocks¶

Until now, we assumed that a master can run builds at any slave whenever needed or desired. Some times, you want to enforce additional constraints on builds. For reasons like limited network bandwidth, old slave machines, or a self-willed data base server, you may want to limit the number of builds (or build steps) that can access a resource.

Access Modes¶

The mechanism used by Buildbot is known as the read/write lock [1]. It allows either many readers or a single writer but not a combination of readers and writers. The general lock has been modified and extended for use in Buildbot. Firstly, the general lock allows an infinite number of readers. In Buildbot, we often want to put an upper limit on the number of readers, for example allowing two out of five possible builds at the same time. To do this, the lock counts the number of active readers. Secondly, the terms read mode and write mode are confusing in Buildbot context. They have been replaced by counting mode (since the lock counts them) and exclusive mode. As a result of these changes, locks in Buildbot allow a number of builds (up to some fixed number) in counting mode, or they allow one build in exclusive mode.

Note

Access modes are specified when a lock is used. That is, it is possible to have a single lock that is used by several slaves in counting mode, and several slaves in exclusive mode. In fact, this is the strength of the modes: accessing a lock in exclusive mode will prevent all counting-mode accesses.

Count¶

Often, not all slaves are equal. To allow for this situation, Buildbot allows to have a separate upper limit on the count for each slave. In this way, you can have at most 3 concurrent builds at a fast slave, 2 at a slightly older slave, and 1 at all other slaves.

Scope¶

The final thing you can specify when you introduce a new lock is its scope. Some constraints are global -- they must be enforced over all slaves. Other constraints are local to each slave. A master lock is used for the global constraints. You can ensure for example that at most one build (of all builds running at all slaves) accesses the data base server. With a slave lock you can add a limit local to each slave. With such a lock, you can for example enforce an upper limit to the number of active builds at a slave, like above.

Examples¶

Time for a few examples. Below a master lock is defined to protect a data base, and a slave lock is created to limit the number of builds at each slave.

from buildbot import locks

db_lock = locks.MasterLock("database")
build_lock = locks.SlaveLock("slave_builds",
                             maxCount = 1,
                             maxCountForSlave = { 'fast': 3, 'new': 2 })

After importing locks from buildbot, db_lock is defined to be a master lock. The database string is used for uniquely identifying the lock. At the next line, a slave lock called build_lock is created. It is identified by the slave_builds string. Since the requirements of the lock are a bit more complicated, two optional arguments are also specified. The maxCount parameter sets the default limit for builds in counting mode to 1. For the slave called 'fast' however, we want to have at most three builds, and for the slave called 'new' the upper limit is two builds running at the same time.

The next step is accessing the locks in builds. Buildbot allows a lock to be used during an entire build (from beginning to end), or only during a single build step. In the latter case, the lock is claimed for use just before the step starts, and released again when the step ends. To prevent deadlocks, [2] it is not possible to claim or release locks at other times.

To use locks, you add them with a locks argument to a build or a step. Each use of a lock is either in counting mode (that is, possibly shared with other builds) or in exclusive mode, and this is indicated with the syntax lock.access(mode), where mode is one of "counting" or "exclusive".

A build or build step proceeds only when it has acquired all locks. If a build or step needs a lot of locks, it may be starved [3] by other builds that need fewer locks.

To illustrate use of locks, a few examples.

from buildbot import locks
from buildbot.steps import source, shell
from buildbot.process import factory

db_lock = locks.MasterLock("database")
build_lock = locks.SlaveLock("slave_builds",
                             maxCount = 1,
                             maxCountForSlave = { 'fast': 3, 'new': 2 })

f = factory.BuildFactory()
f.addStep(source.SVN(svnurl="http://example.org/svn/Trunk"))
f.addStep(shell.ShellCommand(command="make all"))
f.addStep(shell.ShellCommand(command="make test",
                             locks=[db_lock.access('exclusive')]))

b1 = {'name': 'full1', 'slavename': 'fast',  'builddir': 'f1', 'factory': f,
       'locks': [build_lock.access('counting')] }

b2 = {'name': 'full2', 'slavename': 'new',   'builddir': 'f2', 'factory': f,
       'locks': [build_lock.access('counting')] }

b3 = {'name': 'full3', 'slavename': 'old',   'builddir': 'f3', 'factory': f,
       'locks': [build_lock.access('counting')] }

b4 = {'name': 'full4', 'slavename': 'other', 'builddir': 'f4', 'factory': f,
       'locks': [build_lock.access('counting')] }

c['builders'] = [b1, b2, b3, b4]

Here we have four slaves b1, b2, b3, and b4. Each slave performs the same checkout, make, and test build step sequence. We want to enforce that at most one test step is executed between all slaves due to restrictions with the data base server. This is done by adding the locks= parameter with the third step. It takes a list of locks with their access mode. In this case only the db_lock is needed. The exclusive access mode is used to ensure there is at most one slave that executes the test step.

In addition to exclusive accessing the data base, we also want slaves to stay responsive even under the load of a large number of builds being triggered. For this purpose, the slave lock called build_lock is defined. Since the restraint holds for entire builds, the lock is specified in the builder with 'locks': [build_lock.access('counting')].

Note that you will occasionally see lock.access(mode) written as LockAccess(lock, mode). The two are equivalent, but the former is preferred.

[1]	See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read/write_lock_pattern for more information.

[2]	Deadlock is the situation where two or more slaves each hold a lock in exclusive mode, and in addition want to claim the lock held by the other slave exclusively as well. Since locks allow at most one exclusive user, both slaves will wait forever.

[3]	Starving is the situation that only a few locks are available, and they are immediately grabbed by another build. As a result, it may take a long time before all locks needed by the starved build are free at the same time.

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=[{"channel": "#example1"},
                                       {"channel": "#example2",
                                        "password": "somesecretpassword"}]))

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.

Note

Implementation 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, either inside startService or later. They may call status.subscribe in startService to receive notifications of builder events, in which case they must define builderAdded and related methods. See the docstrings in buildbot/interfaces.py for full details.

The remainder of this section describes each built-in status target. A full list of status targets is available in the Status Target Index.

WebStatus¶

class buildbot.status.web.baseweb.WebStatus¶

The buildbot.status.html.WebStatus status target runs a small web server inside the buildmaster. You can point a browser at this web server and retrieve information about every build the buildbot knows about, as well as find out what the buildbot is currently working on.

The first page you will see is the Welcome Page, which contains links to all the other useful pages. By default, this page is served from the status/web/templates/root.html file in buildbot's library area.

One of the most complex resource provided by WebStatus is the Waterfall Display, which shows a time-based chart of events. This somewhat-busy display provides detailed information about all steps of all recent builds, and provides hyperlinks to look at individual build logs and source changes. By simply reloading this page on a regular basis, you will see a complete description of everything the buildbot is currently working on.

A similar, but more developer-oriented display is the Grid display. This arranges builds by SourceStamp (horizontal axis) and builder (vertical axis), and can provide quick information as to which revisions are passing or failing on which builders.

There are also pages with more specialized information. For example, there is a page which shows the last 20 builds performed by the buildbot, one line each. Each line is a link to detailed information about that build. By adding query arguments to the URL used to reach this page, you can narrow the display to builds that involved certain branches, or which ran on certain Builders. These pages are described in great detail below.

Configuration¶

The simplest possible configuration for WebStatus is:

from buildbot.status.html import WebStatus
c['status'].append(WebStatus(8080))

Buildbot uses a templating system for the web interface. The source of these templates can be found in the status/web/templates/ directory in buildbot's library area. You can override these templates by creating alternate versions in a templates/ directory within the buildmaster's base directory.

If that isn't enough you can also provide additional Jinja2 template loaders:

import jinja2
myloaders = [
    jinja2.FileSystemLoader("/tmp/mypath"),
    ]

c['status'].append(html.WebStatus(
    …,
    jinja_loaders = myloaders,
))

The first time a buildmaster is created, the public_html/ directory is populated with some sample files, which you will probably want to customize for your own project. These files are all static: the buildbot does not modify them in any way as it serves them to HTTP clients.

Templates in templates/ take precedence over static files in public_html/.

The initial robots.txt file has Disallow lines for all of the dynamically-generated buildbot pages, to discourage web spiders and search engines from consuming a lot of CPU time as they crawl through the entire history of your buildbot. If you are running the buildbot behind a reverse proxy, you'll probably need to put the robots.txt file somewhere else (at the top level of the parent web server), and replace the URL prefixes in it with more suitable values.

If you would like to use an alternative root directory, add the public_html= option to the WebStatus creation:

c['status'].append(WebStatus(8080, public_html="/var/www/buildbot"))

In addition, if you are familiar with twisted.web Resource Trees, you can write code to add additional pages at places inside this web space. Just use webstatus.putChild to place these resources.

The following section describes the special URLs and the status views they provide.

Buildbot Web Resources¶

Certain URLs are magic, and the pages they serve are created by code in various classes in the buildbot.status.web package instead of being read from disk. The most common way to access these pages is for the buildmaster admin to write or modify the index.html page to contain links to them. Of course other project web pages can contain links to these buildbot pages as well.

Many pages can be modified by adding query arguments to the URL. For example, a page which shows the results of the most recent build normally does this for all builders at once. But by appending ?builder=i386 to the end of the URL, the page will show only the results for the i386 builder. When used in this way, you can add multiple builder= arguments to see multiple builders. Remembering that URL query arguments are separated from each other with ampersands, a URL that ends in ?builder=i386&builder=ppc would show builds for just those two Builders.

The branch= query argument can be used on some pages. This filters the information displayed by that page down to only the builds or changes which involved the given branch. Use branch=trunk to reference the trunk: if you aren't intentionally using branches, you're probably using trunk. Multiple branch= arguments can be used to examine multiple branches at once (so appending ?branch=foo&branch=bar to the URL will show builds involving either branch). No branch= arguments means to show builds and changes for all branches.

Some pages may include the Builder name or the build number in the main part of the URL itself. For example, a page that describes Build #7 of the i386 builder would live at /builders/i386/builds/7.

The table below lists all of the internal pages and the URLs that can be used to access them.

/waterfall

This provides a chronologically-oriented display of the activity of all builders. It is the same display used by the Waterfall display.

By adding one or more builder= query arguments, the Waterfall is restricted to only showing information about the given Builders. By adding one or more branch= query arguments, the display is restricted to showing information about the given branches. In addition, adding one or more category= query arguments to the URL will limit the display to Builders that were defined with one of the given categories.

A show_events=true query argument causes the display to include non-Build events, like slaves attaching and detaching, as well as reconfiguration events. show_events=false hides these events. The default is to show them.

By adding the failures_only=true query argument, the Waterfall is restricted to only showing information about the builders that are currently failing. A builder is considered failing if the last finished build was not successful, a step in the current build(s) is failing, or if the builder is offline.

The last_time=, first_time=, and show_time= arguments will control what interval of time is displayed. The default is to show the latest events, but these can be used to look at earlier periods in history. The num_events= argument also provides a limit on the size of the displayed page.

The Waterfall has references to resources many of the other portions of the URL space: /builders for access to individual builds, /changes for access to information about source code changes, etc.

/grid

This provides a chronologically oriented display of builders, by revision. The builders are listed down the left side of the page, and the revisions are listed across the top.

By adding one or more category= arguments the grid will be restricted to revisions in those categories.

A width=N argument will limit the number of revisions shown to N, defaulting to 5.

A branch=BRANCHNAME argument will limit the grid to revisions on branch BRANCHNAME.

/tgrid

The Transposed Grid is similar to the standard grid, but, as the name implies, transposes the grid: the revisions are listed down the left side of the page, and the build hosts are listed across the top. It accepts the same query arguments. The exception being that instead of width the argument is named length.

This page also has a rev_order= query argument that lets you change in what order revisions are shown. Valid values are asc (ascending, oldest revision first) and desc (descending, newest revision first).

/console

EXPERIMENTAL: This provides a developer-oriented display of the last changes and how they affected the builders.

It allows a developer to quickly see the status of each builder for the first build including his or her change. A green box means that the change succeeded for all the steps for a given builder. A red box means that the changed introduced a new regression on a builder. An orange box means that at least one of the tests failed, but it was also failing in the previous build, so it is not possible to see if there were any regressions from this change. Finally a yellow box means that the test is in progress.

By adding one or more builder= query arguments, the Console view is restricted to only showing information about the given Builders. Adding a repository= argument will limit display to a given repository. By adding one or more branch= query arguments, the display is restricted to showing information about the given branches. In addition, adding one or more category= query arguments to the URL will limit the display to Builders that were defined with one of the given categories. With the project= query argument, it's possible to restrict the view to changes from the given project. With the codebase= query argument, it's possible to restrict the view to changes for the given codebase.

By adding one or more name= query arguments to the URL, the console view is restricted to only showing changes made by the given users.

NOTE: To use this page, your buildbot.css file in public_html must be the one found in master/buildbot/status/web/files/default.css. This is the default for new installs, but upgrades of very old installs of Buildbot may need to manually fix the CSS file.

The console view is still in development. At this moment by default the view sorts revisions lexically, which can lead to odd behavior with non-integer revisions (e.g., Git), or with integer revisions of different length (e.g., 999 and 1000). It also has some issues with displaying multiple branches at the same time. If you do have multiple branches, you should use the branch= query argument. The order_console_by_time option may help sorting revisions, although it depends on the date being set correctly in each commit:

w = html.WebStatus(http_port=8080, order_console_by_time=True)

/rss

This provides a rss feed summarizing all failed builds. The same query-arguments used by 'waterfall' can be added to filter the feed output.

/atom

This provides an atom feed summarizing all failed builds. The same query-arguments used by 'waterfall' can be added to filter the feed output.

/json

This view provides quick access to Buildbot status information in a form that is easily digested from other programs, including JavaScript. See /json/help for detailed interactive documentation of the output formats for this view.

/buildstatus?builder=$BUILDERNAME&number=$BUILDNUM

This displays a waterfall-like chronologically-oriented view of all the steps for a given build number on a given builder.

/builders/$BUILDERNAME

This describes the given Builder and provides buttons to force a build. A numbuilds= argument will control how many build lines are displayed (5 by default).

/builders/$BUILDERNAME/builds/$BUILDNUM

This describes a specific Build.

/builders/$BUILDERNAME/builds/$BUILDNUM/steps/$STEPNAME

This describes a specific BuildStep.

/builders/$BUILDERNAME/builds/$BUILDNUM/steps/$STEPNAME/logs/$LOGNAME

This provides an HTML representation of a specific logfile.

/builders/$BUILDERNAME/builds/$BUILDNUM/steps/$STEPNAME/logs/$LOGNAME/text

This returns the logfile as plain text, without any HTML coloring markup. It also removes the headers, which are the lines that describe what command was run and what the environment variable settings were like. This maybe be useful for saving to disk and feeding to tools like grep.

/changes

This provides a brief description of the ChangeSource in use (see Change Sources).

/changes/NN

This shows detailed information about the numbered Change: who was the author, what files were changed, what revision number was represented, etc.

/buildslaves

This summarizes each BuildSlave, including which Builders are configured to use it, whether the buildslave is currently connected or not, and host information retrieved from the buildslave itself.

A no_builders=1 URL argument will omit the builders column. This is useful if each buildslave is assigned to a large number of builders.

/one_line_per_build

This page shows one line of text for each build, merging information from all Builders [1]. Each line specifies the name of the Builder, the number of the Build, what revision it used, and a summary of the results. Successful builds are in green, while failing builds are in red. The date and time of the build are added to the right-hand edge of the line. The lines are ordered by build finish timestamp.

One or more builder= or branch= arguments can be used to restrict the list. In addition, a numbuilds= argument will control how many lines are displayed (20 by default).

/builders

This page shows a small table, with one box for each Builder, containing the results of the most recent Build. It does not show the individual steps, or the current status. This is a simple summary of buildbot status: if this page is green, then all tests are passing.

As with /one_line_per_build, this page will also honor builder= and branch= arguments.

/users

This page exists for authentication reasons when checking showUsersPage. It'll redirect to /authfail on False, /users/table on True, and give a username/password login prompt on 'auth'. Passing or failing results redirect to the same pages as False and True.

/users/table

This page shows a table containing users that are stored in the database. It has columns for their respective uid and identifier values, with the uid values being clickable for more detailed information relating to a user.

/users/table/{NN}

Shows all the attributes stored in the database relating to the user with uid {NN} in a table.

/about

This page gives a brief summary of the Buildbot itself: software version, versions of some libraries that the Buildbot depends upon, etc. It also contains a link to the buildbot.net home page.

There are also a set of web-status resources that are intended for use by other programs, rather than humans.

/change_hook: This provides an endpoint for web-based source change notification. It is used by GitHub and contrib/post_build_request.py. See Change Hooks for more details.

WebStatus Configuration Parameters¶

HTTP Connection¶

The most common way to run a WebStatus is on a regular TCP port. To do this, just pass in the TCP port number when you create the WebStatus instance; this is called the http_port argument:

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

The http_port argument is actually a strports specification for the port that the web server should listen on. This can be a simple port number, or a string like http_port="tcp:8080:interface=127.0.0.1" (to limit connections to the loopback interface, and therefore to clients running on the same host) [2].

If instead (or in addition) you provide the distrib_port argument, a twisted.web distributed server will be started either on a TCP port (if distrib_port is like "tcp:12345") or more likely on a UNIX socket (if distrib_port is like "unix:/path/to/socket").

The public_html option gives the path to a regular directory of HTML files that will be displayed alongside the various built-in URLs buildbot supplies. This is most often used to supply CSS files (/buildbot.css) and a top-level navigational file (/index.html), but can also serve any other files required - even build results!

Authorization¶

The buildbot web status is, by default, read-only. It displays lots of information, but users are not allowed to affect the operation of the buildmaster. However, there are a number of supported activities that can be enabled, and Buildbot can also perform rudimentary username/password authentication. The actions are:

forceBuild: force a particular builder to begin building, optionally with a specific revision, branch, etc.
forceAllBuilds: force all builders to start building
pingBuilder: "ping" a builder's buildslaves to check that they are alive
gracefulShutdown: gracefully shut down a slave when it is finished with its current build
pauseSlave: temporarily stop running new builds on a slave
stopBuild: stop a running build
stopAllBuilds: stop all running builds
cancelPendingBuild: cancel a build that has not yet started
stopChange: cancel builds that include a given change number
cleanShutdown: shut down the master gracefully, without interrupting builds
showUsersPage: access to page displaying users in the database, see User Objects

For each of these actions, you can configure buildbot to never allow the action, always allow the action, allow the action to any authenticated user, or check with a function of your creation to determine whether the action is OK (see below).

This is all configured with the Authz class:

from buildbot.status.html import WebStatus
from buildbot.status.web.authz import Authz
authz = Authz(
    forceBuild=True,
    stopBuild=True)
c['status'].append(WebStatus(http_port=8080, authz=authz))

Each of the actions listed above is an option to Authz. You can specify False (the default) to prohibit that action or True to enable it. Or you can specify a callable. Each such callable will take a username as its first argument. The remaining arguments vary depending on the type of authorization request. For forceBuild, the second argument is the builder status.

Authentication¶

If you do not wish to allow strangers to perform actions, but do want developers to have such access, you will need to add some authentication support. Pass an instance of status.web.auth.IAuth as a auth keyword argument to Authz, and specify the action as "auth".

from buildbot.status.html import WebStatus
from buildbot.status.web.authz import Authz
from buildbot.status.web.auth import BasicAuth
users = [('bob', 'secret-pass'), ('jill', 'super-pass')]
authz = Authz(auth=BasicAuth(users),
    forceBuild='auth', # only authenticated users
    pingBuilder=True, # but anyone can do this
)
c['status'].append(WebStatus(http_port=8080, authz=authz))
# or
from buildbot.status.web.auth import HTPasswdAuth
auth = (HTPasswdAuth('/path/to/htpasswd'))
# or
from buildbot.status.web.auth import UsersAuth
auth = UsersAuth()

The class BasicAuth implements a basic authentication mechanism using a list of user/password tuples provided from the configuration file. The class HTPasswdAuth implements an authentication against an .htpasswd file. The HTPasswdAprAuth a subclass of HTPasswdAuth use libaprutil for authenticating. This adds support for apr1/md5 and sha1 password hashes but requires libaprutil at runtime. The UsersAuth works with User Objects to check for valid user credentials.

If you need still-more flexibility, pass a function for the authentication action. That function will be called with an authenticated username and some action-specific arguments, and should return true if the action is authorized.

def canForceBuild(username, builder_status):
    if builder_status.getName() == 'smoketest':
        return True # any authenticated user can run smoketest
    elif username == 'releng':
        return True # releng can force whatever they want
    else:
        return False # otherwise, no way.

authz = Authz(auth=BasicAuth(users),
    forceBuild=canForceBuild)

The forceBuild and pingBuilder actions both supply a BuilderStatus object. The stopBuild action supplies a BuildStatus object. The cancelPendingBuild action supplies a BuildRequest. The remainder do not supply any extra arguments.

HTTP-based authentication by frontend server¶

In case if WebStatus is served through reverse proxy that supports HTTP-based authentication (like apache, lighttpd), it's possible to to tell WebStatus to trust web server and get username from request headers. This allows displaying correct usernames in build reason, interrupt messages, etc.

Just set useHttpHeader to True in Authz constructor.

authz = Authz(useHttpHeader=True) # WebStatus secured by web frontend with HTTP auth

Please note that WebStatus can decode password for HTTP Basic requests only (for Digest authentication it's just impossible). Custom status.web.auth.IAuth subclasses may just ignore password at all since it's already validated by web server.

Administrator must make sure that it's impossible to get access to WebStatus using other way than through frontend. Usually this means that WebStatus should listen for incoming connections only on localhost (or on some firewall-protected port). Frontend must require HTTP authentication to access WebStatus pages (using any source for credentials, such as htpasswd, PAM, LDAP).

If you allow unauthenticated access through frontend as well, it's possible to specify a httpLoginLink which will be rendered on the WebStatus for unauthenticated users as a link named Login.

authz = Authz(useHttpHeader=True, httpLoginLink='https://buildbot/login')

A configuration example with Apache HTTPD as reverse proxy could look like the following.

authz = Authz(
  useHttpHeader=True,
  httpLoginLink='https://buildbot/login',
  auth = HTPasswdAprAuth('/var/www/htpasswd'),
  forceBuild = 'auth')

Corresponding Apache configuration.

ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:8010/

<Location /login>
    AuthType Basic
    AuthName "Buildbot"
    AuthUserFile /var/www/htpasswd
    Require valid-user

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?://([^/]+)/(.*)$
    RewriteRule ^.*$ https://%1/%2 [R,L]
</Location>

Logging configuration¶

The WebStatus uses a separate log file (http.log) to avoid clutter buildbot's default log (twistd.log) with request/response messages. This log is also, by default, rotated in the same way as the twistd.log file, but you can also customize the rotation logic with the following parameters if you need a different behaviour.

rotateLength: An integer defining the file size at which log files are rotated.
maxRotatedFiles: The maximum number of old log files to keep.

URL-decorating options¶

These arguments adds an URL link to various places in the WebStatus, such as revisions, repositories, projects and, optionally, ticket/bug references in change comments.

revlink¶

The revlink argument on WebStatus is deprecated in favour of the global revlink option. Only use this if you need to generate different URLs for different web status instances.

In addition to a callable like revlink, this argument accepts a format string or a dict mapping a string (repository name) to format strings.

The format string should use %s to insert the revision id in the url. For example, for Buildbot on GitHub:

revlink='http://github.com/buildbot/buildbot/tree/%s'

The revision ID will be URL encoded before inserted in the replacement string

changecommentlink¶

The changecommentlink argument can be used to create links to ticket-ids from change comments (i.e. #123).

The argument can either be a tuple of three strings, a dictionary mapping strings (project names) to tuples or a callable taking a changetext (a jinja2.Markup instance) and a project name, returning a the same change text with additional links/html tags added to it.

If the tuple is used, it should contain three strings where the first element is a regex that searches for strings (with match groups), the second is a replace-string that, when substituted with \1 etc, yields the URL and the third is the title attribute of the link. (The <a href="" title=""></a> is added by the system.) So, for Trac tickets (#42, etc): changecommentlink(r"#(\d+)", r"http://buildbot.net/trac/ticket/\1", r"Ticket \g<0>") .

projects¶

A dictionary from strings to strings, mapping project names to URLs, or a callable taking a project name and returning an URL.

repositories¶

Same as the projects arg above, a dict or callable mapping project names to URLs.

Display-Specific Options¶

The order_console_by_time option affects the rendering of the console; see the description of the console above.

The numbuilds option determines the number of builds that most status displays will show. It can usually be overriden in the URL, e.g., ?numbuilds=13.

The num_events option gives the default number of events that the waterfall will display. The num_events_max gives the maximum number of events displayed, even if the web browser requests more.

Change Hooks¶

The /change_hook url is a magic URL which will accept HTTP requests and translate them into changes for buildbot. Implementations (such as a trivial json-based endpoint and a GitHub implementation) can be found in master/buildbot/status/web/hooks. The format of the url is /change_hook/DIALECT where DIALECT is a package within the hooks directory. Change_hook is disabled by default and each DIALECT has to be enabled separately, for security reasons

An example WebStatus configuration line which enables change_hook and two DIALECTS:

c['status'].append(html.WebStatus(http_port=8010,allowForce=True,
    change_hook_dialects={
                          'base': True,
                          'somehook': {'option1':True,
                                       'option2':False}}))

Within the WebStatus arguments, the change_hook key enables/disables the module and change_hook_dialects whitelists DIALECTs where the keys are the module names and the values are optional arguments which will be passed to the hooks.

The post_build_request.py script in master/contrib allows for the submission of an arbitrary change request. Run post_build_request.py --help for more information. The base dialect must be enabled for this to work.

GitHub hook¶

The GitHub hook is simple and takes no options.

c['status'].append(html.WebStatus(..
                   change_hook_dialects={ 'github' : True }))

With this set up, add a Post-Receive URL for the project in the GitHub administrative interface, pointing to /change_hook/github relative to the root of the web status. For example, if the grid URL is http://builds.mycompany.com/bbot/grid, then point GitHub to http://builds.mycompany.com/bbot/change_hook/github. To specify a project associated to the repository, append ?project=name to the URL.

Note that there is a standalone HTTP server available for receiving GitHub notifications, as well: contrib/github_buildbot.py. This script may be useful in cases where you cannot expose the WebStatus for public consumption.

Warning

The incoming HTTP requests for this hook are not authenticated by default. Anyone who can access the web status can "fake" a request from GitHub, potentially causing the buildmaster to run arbitrary code.

To protect URL against unauthorized access you should use change_hook_auth option

c['status'].append(html.WebStatus(..
                                  change_hook_auth=["file:changehook.passwd"]))

And create a file changehook.passwd

user:password

Then, create a GitHub service hook (see https://help.github.com/articles/post-receive-hooks) with a WebHook URL like http://user:password@builds.mycompany.com/bbot/change_hook/github.

See the documentation for twisted cred for more option to pass to change_hook_auth.

Note that not using change_hook_auth can expose you to security risks.

Google Code hook¶

The Google Code hook is quite similar to the GitHub Hook. It has one option for the "Post-Commit Authentication Key" used to check if the request is legitimate:

c['status'].append(html.WebStatus(
    …,
    change_hook_dialects={'googlecode': {'secret_key': 'FSP3p-Ghdn4T0oqX'}}
))

This will add a "Post-Commit URL" for the project in the Google Code administrative interface, pointing to /change_hook/googlecode relative to the root of the web status.

Alternatively, you can use the GoogleCodeAtomPoller ChangeSource that periodically poll the Google Code commit feed for changes.

Note

Google Code doesn't send the branch on which the changes were made. So, the hook always returns 'default' as the branch, you can override it with the 'branch' option:

change_hook_dialects={'googlecode': {'secret_key': 'FSP3p-Ghdn4T0oqX', 'branch': 'master'}}

Poller hook¶

The poller hook allows you to use GET requests to trigger polling. One advantage of this is your buildbot instance can (at start up) poll to get changes that happened while it was down, but then you can still use a commit hook to get fast notification of new changes.

Suppose you have a poller configured like this:

c['change_source'] = SVNPoller(
    svnurl="https://amanda.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/amanda/amanda",
    split_file=split_file_branches)

And you configure your WebStatus to enable this hook:

c['status'].append(html.WebStatus(
    …,
    change_hook_dialects={'poller': True}
))

Then you will be able to trigger a poll of the SVN repository by poking the /change_hook/poller URL from a commit hook like this:

curl http://yourbuildbot/change_hook/poller?poller=https%3A%2F%2Famanda.svn.sourceforge.net%2Fsvnroot%2Famanda%2Famanda

If no poller argument is provided then the hook will trigger polling of all polling change sources.

You can restrict which pollers the webhook has access to using the allowed option:

c['status'].append(html.WebStatus(
    …,
    change_hook_dialects={'poller': {'allowed': ['https://amanda.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/amanda/amanda']}}
))

MailNotifier¶

class buildbot.status.mail.MailNotifier¶

The buildbot can also send email when builds finish. The most common use of this is to tell developers when their change has caused the build to fail. It is also quite common to send a message to a mailing list (usually named builds or similar) about every build.

The MailNotifier status target is used to accomplish this. You configure it by specifying who mail should be sent to, under what circumstances mail should be sent, and how to deliver the mail. It can be configured to only send out mail for certain builders, and only send messages when the build fails, or when the builder transitions from success to failure. It can also be configured to include various build logs in each message.

If a proper lookup function is configured, the message will be sent to the "interested users" list (Doing Things With Users), which includes all developers who made changes in the build. By default, however, Buildbot does not know how to construct an email addressed based on the information from the version control system. See the lookup argument, below, for more information.

You can add additional, statically-configured, recipients with the extraRecipients argument. You can also add interested users by setting the owners build property to a list of users in the scheduler constructor (Configuring Schedulers).

Each MailNotifier sends mail to a single set of recipients. To send different kinds of mail to different recipients, use multiple MailNotifiers.

The following simple example will send an email upon the completion of each build, to just those developers whose Changes were included in the build. The email contains a description of the Build, its results, and URLs where more information can be obtained.

from buildbot.status.mail import MailNotifier
mn = MailNotifier(fromaddr="buildbot@example.org", lookup="example.org")
c['status'].append(mn)

To get a simple one-message-per-build (say, for a mailing list), use the following form instead. This form does not send mail to individual developers (and thus does not need the lookup= argument, explained below), instead it only ever sends mail to the extra recipients named in the arguments:

mn = MailNotifier(fromaddr="buildbot@example.org",
                  sendToInterestedUsers=False,
                  extraRecipients=['listaddr@example.org'])

If your SMTP host requires authentication before it allows you to send emails, this can also be done by specifying smtpUser and smptPassword:

mn = MailNotifier(fromaddr="myuser@gmail.com",
                  sendToInterestedUsers=False,
                  extraRecipients=["listaddr@example.org"],
                  relayhost="smtp.gmail.com", smtpPort=587,
                  smtpUser="myuser@gmail.com", smtpPassword="mypassword")

If you want to require Transport Layer Security (TLS), then you can also set useTls:

mn = MailNotifier(fromaddr="myuser@gmail.com",
                  sendToInterestedUsers=False,
                  extraRecipients=["listaddr@example.org"],
                  useTls=True, relayhost="smtp.gmail.com", smtpPort=587,
                  smtpUser="myuser@gmail.com", smtpPassword="mypassword")

Note

If you see twisted.mail.smtp.TLSRequiredError exceptions in the log while using TLS, this can be due either to the server not supporting TLS or to a missing PyOpenSSL package on the buildmaster system.

In some cases it is desirable to have different information then what is provided in a standard MailNotifier message. For this purpose MailNotifier provides the argument messageFormatter (a function) which allows for the creation of messages with unique content.

For example, if only short emails are desired (e.g., for delivery to phones)

from buildbot.status.builder import Results
def messageFormatter(mode, name, build, results, master_status):
    result = Results[results]

    text = list()
    text.append("STATUS: %s" % result.title())
    return {
        'body' : "\n".join(text),
        'type' : 'plain'
    }

mn = MailNotifier(fromaddr="buildbot@example.org",
                  sendToInterestedUsers=False,
                  mode=('problem',),
                  extraRecipients=['listaddr@example.org'],
                  messageFormatter=messageFormatter)

Another example of a function delivering a customized html email containing the last 80 log lines of logs of the last build step is given below:

from buildbot.status.builder import Results

import cgi, datetime

def html_message_formatter(mode, name, build, results, master_status):
    """Provide a customized message to Buildbot's MailNotifier.

    The last 80 lines of the log are provided as well as the changes
    relevant to the build.  Message content is formatted as html.
    """
    result = Results[results]

    limit_lines = 80
    text = list()
    text.append(u'<h4>Build status: %s</h4>' % result.upper())
    text.append(u'<table cellspacing="10"><tr>')
    text.append(u"<td>Buildslave for this Build:</td><td><b>%s</b></td></tr>" % build.getSlavename())
    if master_status.getURLForThing(build):
        text.append(u'<tr><td>Complete logs for all build steps:</td><td><a href="%s">%s</a></td></tr>'
                    % (master_status.getURLForThing(build),
                       master_status.getURLForThing(build))
                    )
        text.append(u'<tr><td>Build Reason:</td><td>%s</td></tr>' % build.getReason())
        source = u""
        for ss in build.getSourceStamps():
            if ss.codebase:
                source += u'%s: ' % ss.codebase
            if ss.branch:
                source += u"[branch %s] " % ss.branch
            if ss.revision:
                source +=  ss.revision
            else:
                source += u"HEAD"
            if ss.patch:
                source += u" (plus patch)"
            if ss.patch_info: # add patch comment
                source += u" (%s)" % ss.patch_info[1]
        text.append(u"<tr><td>Build Source Stamp:</td><td><b>%s</b></td></tr>" % source)
        text.append(u"<tr><td>Blamelist:</td><td>%s</td></tr>" % ",".join(build.getResponsibleUsers()))
        text.append(u'</table>')
        if ss.changes:
            text.append(u'<h4>Recent Changes:</h4>')
            for c in ss.changes:
                cd = c.asDict()
                when = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(cd['when'] ).ctime()
                text.append(u'<table cellspacing="10">')
                text.append(u'<tr><td>Repository:</td><td>%s</td></tr>' % cd['repository'] )
                text.append(u'<tr><td>Project:</td><td>%s</td></tr>' % cd['project'] )
                text.append(u'<tr><td>Time:</td><td>%s</td></tr>' % when)
                text.append(u'<tr><td>Changed by:</td><td>%s</td></tr>' % cd['who'] )
                text.append(u'<tr><td>Comments:</td><td>%s</td></tr>' % cd['comments'] )
                text.append(u'</table>')
                files = cd['files']
                if files:
                    text.append(u'<table cellspacing="10"><tr><th align="left">Files</th></tr>')
                    for file in files:
                        text.append(u'<tr><td>%s:</td></tr>' % file['name'] )
                    text.append(u'</table>')
        text.append(u'<br>')
        # get log for last step
        logs = build.getLogs()
        # logs within a step are in reverse order. Search back until we find stdio
        for log in reversed(logs):
            if log.getName() == 'stdio':
                break
        name = "%s.%s" % (log.getStep().getName(), log.getName())
        status, dummy = log.getStep().getResults()
        content = log.getText().splitlines() # Note: can be VERY LARGE
        url = u'%s/steps/%s/logs/%s' % (master_status.getURLForThing(build),
                                       log.getStep().getName(),
                                       log.getName())

        text.append(u'<i>Detailed log of last build step:</i> <a href="%s">%s</a>'
                    % (url, url))
        text.append(u'<br>')
        text.append(u'<h4>Last %d lines of "%s"</h4>' % (limit_lines, name))
        unilist = list()
        for line in content[len(content)-limit_lines:]:
            unilist.append(cgi.escape(unicode(line,'utf-8')))
        text.append(u'<pre>'.join([uniline for uniline in unilist]))
        text.append(u'</pre>')
        text.append(u'<br><br>')
        text.append(u'<b>-The Buildbot</b>')
        return {
            'body': u"\n".join(text),
            'type': 'html'
            }

mn = MailNotifier(fromaddr="buildbot@example.org",
                  sendToInterestedUsers=False,
                  mode=('failing',),
                  extraRecipients=['listaddr@example.org'],
                  messageFormatter=html_message_formatter)

MailNotifier arguments¶

fromaddr

The email address to be used in the 'From' header.

sendToInterestedUsers

(boolean). If True (the default), send mail to all of the Interested Users. If False, only send mail to the extraRecipients list.

extraRecipients

(list of strings). A list of email addresses to which messages should be sent (in addition to the InterestedUsers list, which includes any developers who made Changes that went into this build). It is a good idea to create a small mailing list and deliver to that, then let subscribers come and go as they please.

subject

(string). A string to be used as the subject line of the message. %(builder)s will be replaced with the name of the builder which provoked the message.

mode

(list of strings). A combination of:

change: Send mail about builds which change status.
failing: Send mail about builds which fail.
passing: Send mail about builds which succeed.
problem: Send mail about a build which failed when the previous build has passed.
warnings: Send mail about builds which generate warnings.
exception: Send mail about builds which generate exceptions.
all: Always send mail about builds.

Defaults to (failing, passing, warnings).

builders

(list of strings). A list of builder names for which mail should be sent. Defaults to None (send mail for all builds). Use either builders or categories, but not both.

categories

(list of strings). A list of category names to serve status information for. Defaults to None (all categories). Use either builders or categories, but not both.

addLogs

(boolean). If True, include all build logs as attachments to the messages. These can be quite large. This can also be set to a list of log names, to send a subset of the logs. Defaults to False.

addPatch

(boolean). If True, include the patch content if a patch was present. Patches are usually used on a Try server. Defaults to True.

buildSetSummary

(boolean). If True, send a single summary email consisting of the concatenation of all build completion messages rather than a completion message for each build. Defaults to False.

relayhost

(string). The host to which the outbound SMTP connection should be made. Defaults to 'localhost'

smtpPort

(int). The port that will be used on outbound SMTP connections. Defaults to 25.

useTls

(boolean). When this argument is True (default is False) MailNotifier sends emails using TLS and authenticates with the relayhost. When using TLS the arguments smtpUser and smtpPassword must also be specified.

smtpUser

(string). The user name to use when authenticating with the relayhost.

smtpPassword

(string). The password that will be used when authenticating with the relayhost.

lookup

(implementor of IEmailLookup). Object which provides IEmailLookup, which is responsible for mapping User names (which come from the VC system) into valid email addresses.

If the argument is not provided, the MailNotifier will attempt to build the sendToInterestedUsers from the authors of the Changes that led to the Build via User Objects. If the author of one of the Build's Changes has an email address stored, it will added to the recipients list. With this method, owners are still added to the recipients. Note that, in the current implementation of user objects, email addresses are not stored; as a result, unless you have specifically added email addresses to the user database, this functionality is unlikely to actually send any emails.

Most of the time you can use a simple Domain instance. As a shortcut, you can pass as string: this will be treated as if you had provided Domain(str). For example, lookup='twistedmatrix.com' will allow mail to be sent to all developers whose SVN usernames match their twistedmatrix.com account names. See buildbot/status/mail.py for more details.

Regardless of the setting of lookup, MailNotifier will also send mail to addresses in the extraRecipients list.

messageFormatter

This is a optional function that can be used to generate a custom mail message. A messageFormatter function takes the mail mode (mode), builder name (name), the build status (build), the result code (results), and the BuildMaster status (master_status). It returns a dictionary. The body key gives a string that is the complete text of the message. The type key is the message type ('plain' or 'html'). The 'html' type should be used when generating an HTML message. The subject key is optional, but gives the subject for the email.

extraHeaders

(dictionary) A dictionary containing key/value pairs of extra headers to add to sent e-mails. Both the keys and the values may be a Interpolate instance.

previousBuildGetter

An optional function to calculate the previous build to the one at hand. A previousBuildGetter takes a BuildStatus and returns a BuildStatus. This function is useful when builders don't process their requests in order of arrival (chronologically) and therefore the order of completion of builds does not reflect the order in which changes (and their respective requests) arrived into the system. In such scenarios, status transitions in the chronological sequence of builds within a builder might not reflect the actual status transition in the topological sequence of changes in the tree. What's more, the latest build (the build at hand) might not always be for the most recent request so it might not make sense to send a "change" or "problem" email about it. Returning None from this function will prevent such emails from going out.

As a help to those writing messageFormatter functions, the following table describes how to get some useful pieces of information from the various status objects:

Name of the builder that generated this event

name

Title of the buildmaster

master_status.getTitle

MailNotifier mode

mode (a combination of change, failing, passing, problem, warnings,: exception, all)

Builder result as a string

from buildbot.status.builder import Results
result_str = Results[results]
# one of 'success', 'warnings', 'failure', 'skipped', or 'exception'

URL to build page: master_status.getURLForThing(build)
URL to buildbot main page.: master_status.getBuildbotURL()
Build text: build.getText()
Mapping of property names to values: build.getProperties() (a Properties instance)
Slave name: build.getSlavename()
Build reason (from a forced build): build.getReason()
List of responsible users: build.getResponsibleUsers()

Source information (only valid if ss is not None)

A build has a set of sourcestamps:
for ss in build.getSourceStamp():
    branch = ss.branch
    revision = ss.revision
    patch = ss.patch
    changes = ss.changes # list
A change object has the following useful information:

who

(str) who made this change

revision

(str) what VC revision is this change

branch

(str) on what branch did this change occur

when

(str) when did this change occur

files

(list of str) what files were affected in this change

comments

(str) comments reguarding the change.

The Change methods asText and asDict can be used to format the information above. asText returns a list of strings and asDict returns a dictionary suitable for html/mail rendering.

Log information

logs = list()
for log in build.getLogs():
    log_name = "%s.%s" % (log.getStep().getName(), log.getName())
    log_status, dummy = log.getStep().getResults()
    log_body = log.getText().splitlines() # Note: can be VERY LARGE
    log_url = '%s/steps/%s/logs/%s' % (master_status.getURLForThing(build),
                                       log.getStep().getName(),
                                       log.getName())
    logs.append((log_name, log_url, log_body, log_status))

IRC Bot¶

class buildbot.status.words.IRC¶

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 buildbot.status import words
irc = words.IRC("irc.example.org", "botnickname",
                useColors=False,
                channels=[{"channel": "#example1"},
                          {"channel": "#example2",
                           "password": "somesecretpassword"}],
                password="mysecretnickservpassword",
                notify_events={
                  'exception': 1,
                  'successToFailure': 1,
                  'failureToSuccess': 1,
                })
c['status'].append(irc)

Take a look at the docstring for words.IRC for more details on configuring this service. Note that the useSSL option requires PyOpenSSL. The password argument, if provided, will be sent to Nickserv to claim the nickname: some IRC servers will not allow clients to send private messages until they have logged in with a password. We can also specify a different port number. Default value is 6667.

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.

The bot will add color to some of its messages. This is enabled by default, you might turn it off with useColors=False argument to words.IRC().

If you issue a command that is currently not available, the buildbot will respond with an error message. If the noticeOnChannel=True option was used, error messages will be sent as channel notices instead of messaging. The default value is noticeOnChannel=False.

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.

join CHANNEL

Join the given IRC channel

leave CHANNEL

Leave the given IRC channel

notify on|off|list EVENT

Report events relating to builds. If the command is issued as a private message, then the report will be sent back as a private message to the user who issued the command. Otherwise, the report will be sent to the channel. Available events to be notified are:

started: A build has started
finished: A build has finished
success: A build finished successfully
failure: A build failed
exception: A build generated and exception
xToY: The previous build was x, but this one is Y, where x and Y are each one of success, warnings, failure, exception (except Y is capitalized). For example: successToFailure will notify if the previous build was successful, but this one failed

help COMMAND

Describe a command. Use help commands to get a list of known commands.

shutdown ARG

Control the shutdown process of the buildbot master. Available arguments are:

check: Check if the buildbot master is running or shutting down
start: Start clean shutdown
stop: Stop clean shutdown
now: Shutdown immediately without waiting for the builders to finish

source

Announce the URL of the Buildbot's home page.

version

Announce the version of this Buildbot.

Additionally, the config file may specify default notification options as shown in the example earlier.

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

force build [--branch=BRANCH] [--revision=REVISION] [--props=PROP1=VAL1,PROP2=VAL2...] 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.The user can specify a branch and/or revision with the optional parameters --branch=BRANCH and --revision=REVISION. The user can also give a list of properties with --props=PROP1=VAL1,PROP2=VAL2...
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.

If the categories is set to a category of builders (see the categories option in Builder Configuration) changes related to only that category of builders will be sent to the channel.

If the useRevisions option is set to True, the IRC bot will send status messages that replace the build number with a list of revisions that are contained in that build. So instead of seeing build #253 of ..., you would see something like build containing revisions [a87b2c4]. Revisions that are stored as hashes are shortened to 7 characters in length, as multiple revisions can be contained in one build and may exceed the IRC message length limit.

Two additional arguments can be set to control how fast the IRC bot tries to reconnect when it encounters connection issues. lostDelay is the number of of seconds the bot will wait to reconnect when the connection is lost, where as failedDelay is the number of seconds until the bot tries to reconnect when the connection failed. lostDelay defaults to a random number between 1 and 5, while failedDelay defaults to a random one between 45 and 60. Setting random defaults like this means multiple IRC bots are less likely to deny each other by flooding the server.

PBListener¶

class buildbot.status.client.PBListener¶

import buildbot.status.client
pbl = buildbot.status.client.PBListener(port=int, user=str,
                                        passwd=str)
c['status'].append(pbl)

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 (statusgui) is an example of such a status client. The port argument can also be a strports specification string.

StatusPush¶

class buildbot.status.status_push.StatusPush¶

def Process(self):
  print str(self.queue.popChunk())
  self.queueNextServerPush()

import buildbot.status.status_push
sp = buildbot.status.status_push.StatusPush(serverPushCb=Process,
                                            bufferDelay=0.5,
                                            retryDelay=5)
c['status'].append(sp)

StatusPush batches events normally processed and sends it to the serverPushCb callback every bufferDelay seconds. The callback should pop items from the queue and then queue the next callback. If no items were popped from self.queue, retryDelay seconds will be waited instead.

HttpStatusPush¶

import buildbot.status.status_push
sp = buildbot.status.status_push.HttpStatusPush(
        serverUrl="http://example.com/submit")
c['status'].append(sp)

HttpStatusPush builds on StatusPush and sends HTTP requests to serverUrl, with all the items json-encoded. It is useful to create a status front end outside of buildbot for better scalability.

GerritStatusPush¶

class buildbot.status.status_gerrit.GerritStatusPush¶

from buildbot.status.status_gerrit import GerritStatusPush
from buildbot.status.builder import Results, SUCCESS, RETRY

def gerritReviewCB(builderName, build, result, status, arg):
    if result == RETRY:
        return None, 0, 0

    message =  "Buildbot finished compiling your patchset\n"
    message += "on configuration: %s\n" % builderName
    message += "The result is: %s\n" % Results[result].upper()

    if arg:
        message += "\nFor more details visit:\n"
        message += status.getURLForThing(build) + "\n"

    # message, verified, reviewed
    return message, (result == SUCCESS or -1), 0

def gerritStartCB(builderName, build, arg):
    message = "Buildbot started compiling your patchset\n"
    message += "on configuration: %s\n" % builderName

    if arg:
        message += "\nFor more details visit:\n"
        message += status.getURLForThing(build) + "\n"

    return message

c['buildbotURL'] = 'http://buildbot.example.com/'
c['status'].append(GerritStatusPush('127.0.0.1', 'buildbot',
                                    reviewCB=gerritReviewCB,
                                    reviewArg=c['buildbotURL'],
                                    startCB=gerritStartCB,
                                    startArg=c['buildbotURL']))

GerritStatusPush sends review of the Change back to the Gerrit server, optionally also sending a message when a build is started. reviewCB should return a tuple of message, verified, reviewed. If message is None, no review will be sent. startCB should return a message.

[1]	Apparently this is the same way http://buildd.debian.org displays build status

[2]	It may even be possible to provide SSL access by using a specification like `"ssl:12345:privateKey=mykey.pen:certKey=cert.pem"`, but this is completely untested

Customization¶

For advanced users, Buildbot acts as a framework supporting a customized build application. For the most part, such configurations consist of subclasses set up for use in a regular Buildbot configuration file.

This chapter describes some of the more common idioms in advanced Buildbot configurations.

At the moment, this chapter is an unordered set of suggestions; if you'd like to clean it up, fork the project on GitHub and get started!

Programmatic Configuration Generation¶

Bearing in mind that master.cfg is a Python file, large configurations can be shortened considerably by judicious use of Python loops. For example, the following will generate a builder for each of a range of supported versions of Python:

pythons = [ 'python2.4', 'python2.5', 'python2.6', 'python2.7',
            'python3.2', python3.3' ]
pytest_slaves = [ "slave%s" % n for n in range(10) ]
for python in pythons:
    f = BuildFactory()
    f.addStep(SVN(..))
    f.addStep(ShellCommand(command=[ python, 'test.py' ]))
    c['builders'].append(BuilderConfig(
            name="test-%s" % python,
            factory=f,
            slavenames=pytest_slaves))

Merge Request Functions¶

The logic Buildbot uses to decide which build request can be merged can be customized by providing a Python function (a callable) instead of True or False described in Merging Build Requests.

The callable will be invoked with three positional arguments: a Builder object and two BuildRequest objects. It should return true if the requests can be merged, and False otherwise. For example:

def mergeRequests(builder, req1, req2):
    "any requests with the same branch can be merged"
    return req1.source.branch == req2.source.branch
c['mergeRequests'] = mergeRequests

In many cases, the details of the SourceStamps and BuildRequests are important. In this example, only BuildRequests with the same "reason" are merged; thus developers forcing builds for different reasons will see distinct builds. Note the use of the canBeMergedWith method to access the source stamp compatibility algorithm.

def mergeRequests(builder, req1, req2):
    if req1.source.canBeMergedWith(req2.source) and  req1.reason == req2.reason:
       return True
    return False
c['mergeRequests'] = mergeRequests

If it's necessary to perform some extended operation to determine whether two requests can be merged, then the mergeRequests callable may return its result via Deferred. Note, however, that the number of invocations of the callable is proportional to the square of the request queue length, so a long-running callable may cause undesirable delays when the queue length grows. For example:

def mergeRequests(builder, req1, req2):
    d = defer.gatherResults([
        getMergeInfo(req1.source.revision),
        getMergeInfo(req2.source.revision),
    ])
    def process(info1, info2):
        return info1 == info2
    d.addCallback(process)
    return d
c['mergeRequests'] = mergeRequests

Builder Priority Functions¶

The prioritizeBuilders configuration key specifies a function which is called with two arguments: a BuildMaster and a list of Builder objects. It should return a list of the same Builder objects, in the desired order. It may also remove items from the list if builds should not be started on those builders. If necessary, this function can return its results via a Deferred (it is called with maybeDeferred).

A simple prioritizeBuilders implementation might look like this:

def prioritizeBuilders(buildmaster, builders):
    """Prioritize builders.  'finalRelease' builds have the highest
    priority, so they should be built before running tests, or
    creating builds."""
    builderPriorities = {
        "finalRelease": 0,
        "test": 1,
        "build": 2,
    }
    builders.sort(key=lambda b: builderPriorities.get(b.name, 0))
    return builders

c['prioritizeBuilders'] = prioritizeBuilders

Build Priority Functions¶

When a builder has multiple pending build requests, it uses a nextBuild function to decide which build it should start first. This function is given two parameters: the Builder, and a list of BuildRequest objects representing pending build requests.

A simple function to prioritize release builds over other builds might look like this:

def nextBuild(bldr, requests):
    for r in requests:
        if r.source.branch == 'release':
            return r
    return requests[0]

If some non-immediate result must be calculated, the nextBuild function can also return a Deferred:

def nextBuild(bldr, requests):
    d = get_request_priorities(requests)
    def pick(priorities):
        if requests:
            return sorted(zip(priorities, requests))[0][1]
    d.addCallback(pick)
    return d

Customizing SVNPoller¶

Each source file that is tracked by a Subversion repository has a fully-qualified SVN URL in the following form: ({REPOURL})({PROJECT-plus-BRANCH})({FILEPATH}). When you create the SVNPoller, you give it a svnurl value that includes all of the {REPOURL} and possibly some portion of the {PROJECT-plus-BRANCH} string. The SVNPoller is responsible for producing Changes that contain a branch name and a {FILEPATH} (which is relative to the top of a checked-out tree). The details of how these strings are split up depend upon how your repository names its branches.

PROJECT/BRANCHNAME/FILEPATH repositories¶

One common layout is to have all the various projects that share a repository get a single top-level directory each, with branches, tags, and trunk subdirectories:

amanda/trunk
      /branches/3_2
               /3_3
      /tags/3_2_1
           /3_2_2
           /3_3_0

To set up a SVNPoller that watches the Amanda trunk (and nothing else), we would use the following, using the default split_file:

from buildbot.changes.svnpoller import SVNPoller
c['change_source'] = SVNPoller(
   svnurl="https://svn.amanda.sourceforge.net/svnroot/amanda/amanda/trunk")

In this case, every Change that our SVNPoller produces will have its branch attribute set to None, to indicate that the Change is on the trunk. No other sub-projects or branches will be tracked.

If we want our ChangeSource to follow multiple branches, we have to do two things. First we have to change our svnurl= argument to watch more than just amanda/trunk. We will set it to amanda so that we'll see both the trunk and all the branches. Second, we have to tell SVNPoller how to split the ({PROJECT-plus-BRANCH})({FILEPATH}) strings it gets from the repository out into ({BRANCH}) and ({FILEPATH})`.

We do the latter by providing a split_file function. This function is responsible for splitting something like branches/3_3/common-src/amanda.h into branch='branches/3_3' and filepath='common-src/amanda.h'. The function is always given a string that names a file relative to the subdirectory pointed to by the SVNPoller's svnurl= argument. It is expected to return a dictionary with at least the path key. The splitter may optionally set branch, project and repository. For backwards compatibility it may return a tuple of (branchname, path). It may also return None to indicate that the file is of no interest.

Note

the function should return branches/3_3 rather than just 3_3 because the SVN checkout step, will append the branch name to the baseURL, which requires that we keep the branches component in there. Other VC schemes use a different approach towards branches and may not require this artifact.

If your repository uses this same {PROJECT}/{BRANCH}/{FILEPATH} naming scheme, the following function will work:

def split_file_branches(path):
    pieces = path.split('/')
    if len(pieces) > 1 and pieces[0] == 'trunk':
        return (None, '/'.join(pieces[1:]))
    elif len(pieces) > 2 and pieces[0] == 'branches':
        return ('/'.join(pieces[0:2]),
                '/'.join(pieces[2:]))
    else:
        return None

In fact, this is the definition of the provided split_file_branches function. So to have our Twisted-watching SVNPoller follow multiple branches, we would use this:

from buildbot.changes.svnpoller import SVNPoller, split_file_branches
c['change_source'] = SVNPoller("svn://svn.twistedmatrix.com/svn/Twisted",
                               split_file=split_file_branches)

Changes for all sorts of branches (with names like "branches/1.5.x", and None to indicate the trunk) will be delivered to the Schedulers. Each Scheduler is then free to use or ignore each branch as it sees fit.

If you have multiple projects in the same repository your split function can attach a project name to the Change to help the Scheduler filter out unwanted changes:

from buildbot.changes.svnpoller import split_file_branches
def split_file_projects_branches(path):
    if not "/" in path:
        return None
    project, path = path.split("/", 1)
    f = split_file_branches(path)
    if f:
        info = dict(project=project, path=f[1])
        if f[0]:
            info['branch'] = f[0]
        return info
    return f

Again, this is provided by default. To use it you would do this:

from buildbot.changes.svnpoller import SVNPoller, split_file_projects_branches
c['change_source'] = SVNPoller(
   svnurl="https://svn.amanda.sourceforge.net/svnroot/amanda/",
   split_file=split_file_projects_branches)

Note here that we are monitoring at the root of the repository, and that within that repository is a amanda subdirectory which in turn has trunk and branches. It is that amanda subdirectory whose name becomes the project field of the Change.

BRANCHNAME/PROJECT/FILEPATH repositories¶

Another common way to organize a Subversion repository is to put the branch name at the top, and the projects underneath. This is especially frequent when there are a number of related sub-projects that all get released in a group.

For example, Divmod.org hosts a project named Nevow as well as one named Quotient. In a checked-out Nevow tree there is a directory named formless that contains a Python source file named webform.py. This repository is accessible via webdav (and thus uses an http: scheme) through the divmod.org hostname. There are many branches in this repository, and they use a ({BRANCHNAME})/({PROJECT}) naming policy.

The fully-qualified SVN URL for the trunk version of webform.py is http://divmod.org/svn/Divmod/trunk/Nevow/formless/webform.py. The 1.5.x branch version of this file would have a URL of http://divmod.org/svn/Divmod/branches/1.5.x/Nevow/formless/webform.py. The whole Nevow trunk would be checked out with http://divmod.org/svn/Divmod/trunk/Nevow, while the Quotient trunk would be checked out using http://divmod.org/svn/Divmod/trunk/Quotient.

Now suppose we want to have an SVNPoller that only cares about the Nevow trunk. This case looks just like the {PROJECT}/{BRANCH} layout described earlier:

from buildbot.changes.svnpoller import SVNPoller
c['change_source'] = SVNPoller("http://divmod.org/svn/Divmod/trunk/Nevow")

But what happens when we want to track multiple Nevow branches? We have to point our svnurl= high enough to see all those branches, but we also don't want to include Quotient changes (since we're only building Nevow). To accomplish this, we must rely upon the split_file function to help us tell the difference between files that belong to Nevow and those that belong to Quotient, as well as figuring out which branch each one is on.

from buildbot.changes.svnpoller import SVNPoller
c['change_source'] = SVNPoller("http://divmod.org/svn/Divmod",
                               split_file=my_file_splitter)

The my_file_splitter function will be called with repository-relative pathnames like:

trunk/Nevow/formless/webform.py: This is a Nevow file, on the trunk. We want the Change that includes this to see a filename of formless/webform.py, and a branch of None
branches/1.5.x/Nevow/formless/webform.py: This is a Nevow file, on a branch. We want to get branch='branches/1.5.x' and filename='formless/webform.py'.
trunk/Quotient/setup.py: This is a Quotient file, so we want to ignore it by having my_file_splitter return None.
branches/1.5.x/Quotient/setup.py: This is also a Quotient file, which should be ignored.

The following definition for my_file_splitter will do the job:

def my_file_splitter(path):
    pieces = path.split('/')
    if pieces[0] == 'trunk':
        branch = None
        pieces.pop(0) # remove 'trunk'
    elif pieces[0] == 'branches':
        pieces.pop(0) # remove 'branches'
        # grab branch name
        branch = 'branches/' + pieces.pop(0)
    else:
        return None # something weird
    projectname = pieces.pop(0)
    if projectname != 'Nevow':
        return None # wrong project
    return dict(branch=branch, path='/'.join(pieces))

If you later decide you want to get changes for Quotient as well you could replace the last 3 lines with simply:

return dict(project=projectname, branch=branch, path='/'.join(pieces))

Table Of Contents¶

Buildbot Tutorial¶

First Run¶

Goal¶

Getting the code¶

Creating a master¶

Creating a slave¶

A Quick Tour¶

Goal¶

Setting Project Name and URL¶

Configuration Errors¶

Your First Build¶

Enabling the IRC Bot¶

Setting Authorized Web Users¶

Debugging with Manhole¶

Adding a 'try' scheduler¶

Further Reading¶

Buildbot in 5 minutes - a user-contributed tutorial¶

Installation¶

Builders: the workhorses¶

Schedulers¶

Change sources¶

Status targets¶

Conclusion¶

Buildbot Manual¶

Introduction¶

History and Philosophy¶

System Architecture¶

BuildSlave Connections¶

Buildmaster Architecture¶

Status Delivery Architecture¶

Control Flow¶

Installation¶

Buildbot Components¶

Requirements¶

Common Requirements¶

Windows Support¶

Buildmaster Requirements¶

Installing the code¶

The Distribution Package¶

Installation From PyPI¶

Installation From Tarballs¶

Installation in a Virtualenv¶

Running Buildbot's Tests (optional)¶

Creating a buildmaster¶

Using A Database Server¶

Additional Requirements¶

Buildmaster Options¶

Upgrading an Existing Buildmaster¶

Version-specific Notes¶

Upgrading a Buildmaster to Buildbot-0.7.6¶

Upgrading a Buildmaster to Buildbot-0.8.0¶

Upgrading into a non-SQLite database¶

Upgrading a Buildmaster to Later Versions¶

Creating a buildslave¶

Buildslave Options¶

Other Buildslave Configuration¶

Upgrading an Existing Buildslave¶

Version-specific Notes¶

Upgrading a Buildslave to Buildbot-slave-0.8.1¶

Launching the daemons¶

Logfiles¶

Shutdown¶

Maintenance¶

Troubleshooting¶

Starting the buildslave¶

Connecting to the buildmaster¶

Contrib Scripts¶

Concepts¶

Source Stamps¶

Version Control Systems¶

Tree Stability¶

How Different VC Systems Specify Sources¶

Changes¶

Who¶

Files¶

Comments¶

Project¶

Repository¶

Codebase¶