Regression tests and Paul Millars WRT

[Paul Millar]

Hi Mike,

On Thu, 15 Jan 2004, Mike Hearn wrote:
> 1) Firstly, to Paul - could you hook things up so that when we get new
> red/purple builds an email is sent to wine-devel?

Sure, that should be easy to add.  It used to send emails automatically,
but directly to me so I'd check them and forward the message if it was
genuine.  I didn't want to bombard wine-devel with worthless emails (like
the bit below about web-proxies).


> I just sent a patch to fix the http tests that started failing but I
> wouldn't have seen it if it was not for your system.

Ah, well, there might have been a bit of a problem there.  Web access here
at Glasgow is somewhat badly designed.  The Powers That Be have enforced a
web-proxy by redirecting all out-going web requests to a single page
hosted by some dusty old 486.  Normally, this allows the web tests to
pass, as they don't check the content of the page, unfortunately this
machine needing rebooting now and then.  When I last asked, they monitor
the machine's up, but not that apache is running, so someone has to yell
before it gets fixed.  Looks like that's what happened Friday morning.

As a work-around, I had apache running on the build-machine, with iptables
rewriting (almost) all outgoing web traffic to the local web-server.  
That stopped working after a kernel update (next to fix on TODO list), but
I didn't notice, because whilst the 486 was up, everything looked like it
was working.

Your patch means its possible to change the target website, but I think
it'd be better to keep the iptables rewrite, rather than to fiddle with
the wine code.  What do you think?


> I think Alexandre runs the test suite before checking in each patch, but
> it's still possible that there are ones he misses (like this). If it was
> being done automatically perhaps AJ would not need to run the whole test
> suite before each commit, so he could work faster as well (and
> alexandre-cycles are waaaaay more valuable than cpu-cycles :)

Hmmm...  sure, alexandre-cycles are more valuable; but I don't think this
should replace checks that he runs.  The feedback, even with automatic
emails, would take too long.


> 2) Why is this not running on a WineHQ machine? Too expensive? Not needed?

Too expensive? :^)  The name of the build-machine was a joke with some
friends.  Originally, it was using machines that were being thrown out
because they weren't powerful enough to run the latest Windows OS.  Oh the
irony!  (its a much faster machine, now :)

Originally, the web/SQL-server was just a handy machine with high(ish)  
available uptime and bandwidth with a friendly sysadmin who doesn't mind
me running WRT.

It could be hosted anywhere; the only restriction is the build-box
(quisquiliae) talks mysql directly to the SQL server (which is also the
web server).  The web server also checks the build state by querying a
port on quisquiliae.  There's security issues about all this, so they're
all behind various firewalls and firebridges.

So, I'd be happier leaving things as-is, at least for now.


> 3) Is the source to WRT available anywhere?

I was tidying the code up before releasing it, mostly for vanity's sake :)  
Its pretty ugly, designed to get the job done ... but what the hell, its
available here:

  http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/paulm/Code/wrt-0.1.tar.gz

Paul.

----
Paul Millar