I can't help with hardware, but if you want to virtualize some of your operating systems, VirtualBox is very nice and freely available.  Also, and this is just me throwing out something new, you could write some small Erlang programs that are linked to each other to manage the distribution.  Toss a web interface built using Yaws or Erlyweb and you can have a web client that is built in and talks Erlang.

Of course, if something already exists that does it, that we should probably use it unless it's just too bad to use.

Casey

Tomek Sowiński wrote:
> An idea: could the assembled farm be reused to build other D projects? Being
> able to easily run thorough unittests on a variety of machines would be a
> massive boost in quality of D's software ecosystem.

I agree. We have a constant problem with fixes on one platform breaking on others because the developer doesn't have immediate access to those others.

Andrei Alexandrescu napisał:

> In terms of machines, if anyone could volunteer ssh accounts to stable machines (e.g. preferably not laptops and not connected via dynamic IP, though the latter is satisfactorily fixed by dyndns.org), please chime in!

It would be a shame to leave out laptops. Ideally if someone lights up a computer with a build slave on it, the master could automatically delegate two or three builds on their lousy laptop while they're reading some article. Does anyone know a build system that supports that kind of dynamic work distribution? I know Hudson has slaves but AFAIK you have to register each one manually on the master. For thousands of personal comps going on- and offline we need automization.


Tomek

On 2010-08-06 23:10, sybrandy wrote:
> I can't help with hardware, but if you want to virtualize some of your
> operating systems, VirtualBox is very nice and freely available. Also,
> and this is just me throwing out something new, you could write some
> small Erlang programs that are linked to each other to manage the
> distribution. Toss a web interface built using Yaws or Erlyweb and you
> can have a web client that is built in and talks Erlang.
>
> Of course, if something already exists that does it, that we should
> probably use it unless it's just too bad to use.
>
> Casey

If I recall correctly, according to Apple's licenses it's only legal to virtualize Mac OS X server.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On 08/07/2010 01:40 AM, Tomek Sowiński wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu napisał:
>
>> In terms of machines, if anyone could volunteer ssh accounts to stable
>> machines (e.g. preferably not laptops and not connected via dynamic IP,
>> though the latter is satisfactorily fixed by dyndns.org), please chime in!
>
> It would be a shame to leave out laptops. Ideally if someone lights up a computer with a build slave on it, the master could automatically
> delegate two or three builds on their lousy laptop while they're reading some article. Does anyone know a build system that supports that
> kind of dynamic work distribution? I know Hudson has slaves but AFAIK you have to register each one manually on the master. For
> thousands of personal comps going on- and offline we need automization.

When we'll have thousands, sure, laptops would be great. So far we're keen about the 0->1 transition :o).

Andrei

On 2010-08-06 5:44, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 08/06/2010 12:00 AM, BCS wrote:
>> Hello Andrei,
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I was talking yesterday with Walter and Brad about enacting a build
>>> farm and the build master who would tend to it.
>>>
>>
>> I'd be interested in partaking in such an endeavor. I was actually
>> thinking of doing something related (automatic regression testing). I
>> don't think I'd be a good candidate for maintaining the whole things but
>> I'd be willing to help.
>
> That's great, thanks for volunteering. Automatic regression testing
> sounds like a good starting point, feel free to start on it as you find
> fit and post your progress. You may want to get familiar with the build
> and test processes of dmd and phobos if you aren't.
>
> In terms of machines, if anyone could volunteer ssh accounts to stable
> machines (e.g. preferably not laptops and not connected via dynamic IP,
> though the latter is satisfactorily fixed by dyndns.org), please chime in!
>
> Andrei

I can offer shell access to my VPS: Ubuntu 8.04 LTS with static IP. Regular user access is enough?

L.

On Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:59:28 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail@erdani.org> wrote:
> The basic idea is to amass a number of remote machines (real and/or virtual) running various OSs and use them for building and testing recent commits of dmd and phobos. The website will have a 
"cutting-edge" 
> downloadable package that contains the most recent successful 
build. At 
> the end of the day I want us to get to the point where I type:

I can give you a regular ssh account on an debian server I have setup for students here at EMU.  It is dell power edge.

--
Sent from my droid.

On 06/08/2010 02:59, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello,
>
>
> I was talking yesterday with Walter and Brad about enacting a build farm
> and the build master who would tend to it.
>
> The basic idea is to amass a number of remote machines (real and/or
> virtual) running various OSs and use them for building and testing
> recent commits of dmd and phobos. The website will have a "cutting-edge"
> downloadable package that contains the most recent successful build. At
> the end of the day I want us to get to the point where I type:
>
> % make world
>
> and everything is built from source all the way to uploading the
> installers for all OSs to the website and updating html files accordingly.
>
> Walter and I agreed that wine should be adequate for building and
> testing on Windows, which is helpful because we can use the Unix command
> line tools throughout.
>
> The build master will act as a coordinator of check ins, reviews,
> builds, test harnesses, and probably more. Walter is currently handling
> these roles, and he would be relieved to pass them on to someone reliable.
>
> Any ideas, proposals, contributions and candidates are welcome!
>
>
> Andrei

Continuous integration, pretty nice! I hope someone takes up on that task.

I myself want to learn and gain expertise (hopefully on the near future) on that general area: automated building and testing, across multiple platforms.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer