[arch-dev-public] automatic package builder

Aaron Griffin aaronmgriffin at gmail.com
Sat Sep 26 16:35:17 EDT 2009


On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 6:17 PM, Allan McRae <allan at archlinux.org> wrote:
> Aaron Griffin wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 4:01 AM, Xavier <shiningxc at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> By the way, I am curious about pacbuild :
>>> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacbuild_Explained
>>> What do people think about it ?
>>>
>>
>> Honest opinion? It was over-engineered from the start and is far to
>> complex to use. You need like 3 daemons running, and have to do manual
>> database insertions (why does it have a database?!) to configure
>> things.
>>
>> - - - - -
>>
>> makechrootpkg was made in such a way that is can and should be used
>> for this purpose. Here's how I would setup a "build machine".
>>
>> a) Create two global chroots, one for "current" and one for "testing".
>> We'll call them /var/archroot and /var/archroot-testing (alternative:
>> append arch on there and create 4 total. Requires a 64bit machine and
>> linux32 usage)
>>
>> b) Scan svn commits SOMEHOW. This could be done by watching the
>> arch-commits list, or simply running "svn up" in a job and parse
>> changes
>>
>> c) For each trunk commit found, do an svn export of the trunk and run
>> "makechrootpkg -c -u -r/var/archroot -l $pkgname"
>>
>
> This is the part I really do not like about this.  I commit to trunk when
> 1) I have updated, _built_ and am in the process of committing a package.
> 2) I have an idea/bug fix for the next release and do not want to make a new
> release now.
>
> In both those cases, a commit to trunk does not need a build.  In all
> honesty, I would think that having  downloaded the source and updated the
> PKGBUILD, you would probably have built the package locally anyway to test
> it all out.  So building for #1 seems annoying as I would then need to
> download the built package and retest etc, or just not use it...
>
> How about, to build a package with the build bot, you send an email to
> buildbot at archlinux with content "pkgname carch", and if it is from an
> authorized user, the buildbot starts.  Multiple lines = multiple builds?
>  Needs more thought...
>
>
> Anyway, what exactly are the goals of the buildbot? I see these uses:
> 1) A developer needs to build packages for an arch they do not have
> 2) Helping out with big rebuilds
>
> #1 does not need to monitor trunk as one arch would already be built and
> tested by the developer and it probably should not start automatically as
> who commits both arches at the same time...  For #2, you need to provide a
> tree with the dependency chain anyway, and I have yet to strike a rebuild
> that did not require manual intervention for fixing PKGBUILDs (build fixing
> patching, update versioned deps).
>
>
> So this is what I would like to see set-up:
> 1) A way to build individual (or a small group of) packages on request (e.g.
> a dev does not have access to an arch)
> 2) A way to handle major rebuilds, including generating a build order (I
> have a script that somewhat generates a build order and Aaron started a
> script to do the building)
> 3) When there are no packages queued to be built, check packages in our
> repos for being able to build in a clean chroot.
>
> I started to write a daemon to do #3 but decided my approach was bad so
> scrapped most of it.  It really needed written in a language other than bash
> to be useful (needs to store all info about last build time and success in a
> database and generate web reports).  From doing many large rebuilds, I see
> #3 as being essential to successfully doing #2.

The building from trunk thing is more based on my workflow, but I
really don't maintain much these days, so you can ignore it.

Here's why I was thinking that way: when I'm at work and see that some
package needs something changed, I just update svn considering I'm not
on an Arch machine. I don't actually do the build, I just make changes
and commit them.

Now, your idea with some way to poke the thing to actually do a build
(via email, a web page, command line app, etc) would still work here,
so it sounds like a better idea.


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