[maemo-developers] Autobuilder: building svn tags from garage

[From: Henrik Hedberg]

Graham Cobb wrote:
 >> Personally, I would much rather the autobuilder dependency problem 
was fixed
 >> (with some method for submiting multiple packages with build 
dependencies and
 >> having them build in the right order, with the dependencies being 
satisfied)
 >> instead of this particular feature.

    This should definitely be fixed first and soon. Thanks! :)

Ed Bartosh wrote:
 > Submitting is the main problem. As far as I know dput can't upload
 > several packages at the same time. Any ideas how to do this?

    I find that you all are thinking this too complicated. Depency 
graphs, web based interfaces, discussion about extending the dput and 
such...

    The current situation is that the build is triggered when a .dsc 
file has been uploaded. Fine.

    Let's require that a developer must upload .dsc files (or packages, 
if you like) in the order he or she wants the packages to be build. 
Fairly reasonable, I think. There are timestamps, and scp modifies those 
when it uploads a file into the server. Simple as that. Even make is 
using those magical timestamps.

    Now, the only real modification is that the autobuilder should use 
the latest version of a package that has been built - not some ancient 
package found from the repository.

    So, if a package A depends on a package B, I should upload the .dsc 
file of the package B first. I can upload the .dsc file of the package A 
immediately after that. The autobuilder builds the package B first, 
because it came first (the timestamp is older), and then the package A. 
When building the package A, it is using the package B from _the latest 
build_, not from the repository.

    I think the main problem with the current implementation is that 
even if you have uploaded a package and if it has been successfully 
built, it is not used when building other packages immediately after 
that. You have to wait unspecified time until the package hits the 
repository. Without that delay, one could even write a sequential upload 
script based on email build notifications. (Yes, I know that I could 
repeatedly download the Packages file from the repository, search the 
version number of my library packages, and trigger the uploading of my 
application based on that knowledge. Too complicated!)

    If you care the situation when building fails, you could write an 
additional rule that all other packages from the same uploader are 
removed from the build queue if building of a package fails. Thus, if a 
package A depends on a package B, but the building of the package B 
fails, the autobuilder is not building the package A if it had already 
been uploaded into the queue.

    BR,

    Henrik

-- 
    Henrik Hedberg  -  http://www.henrikhedberg.net/