[Biopython-dev] Continuous integration

[Peter]

2010/9/28 Tiago Antão <tiagoantao at gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> I've been playing with buildbot a bit (for continuous integration
> stuff). I am creating a page on the wiki with some info on that front.
>
> This is just concept/exploratory stuff: if people don't like it, it is
> just a question to delete the page. Hopefully this will at least
> permit to see if continuous integration is worthwhile the effort and
> if buildbot is a good platform for Biopython.
>
> Any comments most welcome. I expect to have a working
> prototype very soon. If people don't  like it, I just trash it (no
> problems with
> that).
>
> Tiago

I see from your notes on the wiki you have been making
good progress. I have a couple of queries/ideas:

(1) Several of our tests go online to the NCBI or UniProt etc.
These tests can and do fail sometimes due to network issues.
Also, having some/many buildbot slaves running on a regular
basis (once a week? once a day?) would add up and this
load may be unwelcome. Perhaps we need to add an -offline
flag to run_tests.py which can skip any online tests?

(2) You mention buildbot doesn't have built in support for
spotting changes in a git repository - but can it do this for
SVN? Since github.com also allow access to the git repo
via svn that might be a more elegant workaround.

(3) Does the buildbot master require the buildbot slaves
be online most/all of the time? Would a desktop machine
which is typically only on during office hours on week
days still be useful? I could probably answer this myself
with a bit more background reading ;)

Thanks

Peter