Re: buildfarm improvements

Reini Urban wrote:

>
>
> What I also miss is the successful output of the make test step.
>
> Something like the Log in "Details", just behind an additional request.
> "Config" =>
> Log
>   Link to "Details"
>
> Without those details one doesn't trust the presented result.
> He might think that only the build was successful, and not the make 
> test step also.
> People I redirect to this page from other projects, not reading the 
> status pages everyday.


That would actually be a substantial change in the way it works. 
Basically, it sends the log of the step that failed. That preserves 
bandwidth and doesn't clog the database with success cases. These logs 
are not inconsiderable - I just checked on the canonical system and for 
the last successful run they were 640Kb. I was originally given this 
(virtual) server on the basis of my assurance that the bandwidth and 
database requirements would be very modest, so I'm inclined to keep to that.

Regarding your last sentence - the intended prime users are the 
postgresql hackers. If it had a vastly more general audience I would 
have produced something a good less spartan in style. I'm not quite sure 
why you're redirecting people to the status pages from other projects. 
This is not the official list of supported platforms, and is not 
intended as a substitute for it.

Perhaps we could put a statement at the top of the details page saying 
what steps have succeeded (which we could infer from the result). Of 
course, if people don't want to believe it then they won't - having logs 
should not make believing it any easier - faking the logs would be quite 
trivial.

FYI here's what happens during a run - a status of OK means that *all* 
of this has run successfully:

[andrew@aloysius buildfarm]$ ./run_build.pl --verbose
checking out source ...
checking if build run needed ...
copying source to pgsql.3034 ...
running configure ...
running make ...
running make check ...
running make contrib ...
running make install ...
setting up db cluster ...
starting db ...
running make installcheck ...
restarting db ...
running make contrib install ...
running make contrib installcheck ...
stopping db ...
OK

All the buildfarm members are known, by the way, and every status report 
is signed with a SHA1 signature. We don't just accept anonymous reports. 
In many cases I know these people from previous electronic interaction, 
via email and/or IRC. That, more than the presence of success logs, 
should give you some confidence in the results, I hope.

cheers

andrew