Re: Making testing on Windows easier

<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 01/17/2013 09:36 PM, Magnus Hagander wrote:<br /></div><blockquote
cite="mid:CABUevEyeiSFk=428ThV5tOR=Xsz9rpOno=uhAznVzgNG3woo7w@mail.gmail.com"type="cite"><br /><pre wrap="">
 
Yeah. I used to have an AMI with the VS environment preinstalled on
Amazon, but I managed to fat finger things and delete it at some point
and haven't really had time to rebuild it.

Having a script that would download and install all the pre-requisites
on such a box would be *great*.</pre></blockquote> I'm working on it:<br /><br /><a
href="https://github.com/2ndQuadrant/pg_build_win">https://github.com/2ndQuadrant/pg_build_win</a><br/><br /><a
href="http://blog.2ndquadrant.com/easier-postgresql-builds-for-windows/">http://blog.2ndquadrant.com/easier-postgresql-builds-for-windows/</a><br
/><br/> I've identified the silent install procedures for most of the required tools (see the docs) and got build
recipeswritten for some of the library dependencies. The next planned step is to have the scripts automatically
downloadand silent-install Visual Studio, etc, rather than have the user run the command lines given in the README
manually.<br/><br /> It's usable as-is, I just need the time to finish it off. The goal is to have a script that turns
buildingPostgreSQL on a clean fresh Windows install into:<br /><br /> - Download ActivePerl<br /> - Install
ActivePerl<br/> - Run "buildgit.pl check install"<br /><br /> Right now it takes a fair bit more than that, but it's
alreadybetter than a fully manual build.<br /><br /><blockquote
cite="mid:CABUevEyeiSFk=428ThV5tOR=Xsz9rpOno=uhAznVzgNG3woo7w@mail.gmail.com"type="cite"><pre wrap="">Then you could
getup and going pretty
 
quickly, and getting a Windows box up running for a few hours there is
almost free, and you don't have to deal with licensing hassles.

(Of course, the AMI method doesn't work all the way since you'd be
distributing Visual Studio, but if we can have a script that
auto-downloads-and-installs it as necessary we can get around that)
</pre></blockquote> I've found EC2 to be unusably slow for Windows builds, with a medium instance taking an hour and a
halfto do a simple build and "vcregress check". They're also restrictive in disk space terms, so you land up needing to
adda second EBS volume.<br /><br /> A local kvm instance works well if a physical host isn't available; so do some of
thealternative cloud providers like LunaCloud, which seems to perform significantly better in the quick testing I did.
Ihaven't tried GoGrid yet.<br /><br /> Many of us have Windows license stickers on laptops/desktops, even if we don't
usethe thing, so for a signficiant proportion of people it's as simple as downloading Windows install media ( <a
href="http://blog.ringerc.id.au/2012/05/you-can-download-legal-windows-7-iso.html">http://blog.ringerc.id.au/2012/05/you-can-download-legal-windows-7-iso.html</a>)
andinstalling a KVM instance then shapshotting it.<br /><br /><br /> I've also put together a Jenkins server that runs
buildson Windows whenever they're pushed to watched git repos. I'd love to make this public, but unfortunately allowing
awide group to run arbitrary code on the current build box isn't something I can afford. I'd need a system that
launcheda snapshot Windows instance for each build and then destroyed it at the end. This is entirely practical with
somethinglike KVM, so if I ever get the chance to work on a Jenkins plugin to do that (or to launch/destroy Windows
cloudinstances automatically), it's possible a semi-public Windows build testing service may be possible.<br /><br />
Whilewe're in fantasy land, the next step would be adding git URLs and branch names to the commitfest app, so it could
pinga continuous integration server to build-test any new patch added to the CF. Right now I'm doing that manually when
Ihave time, but it's slow going.<br /><br /><pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">-- Craig Ringer                   <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"href="http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/">http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/</a>PostgreSQL Development,
24x7Support, Training & Services</pre>