[webkit-dev] First Early Warning System (EWS) bot online

[Dimitri Glazkov]

Anything that's pronounced "Ooze" is bound to be awesome. Keep up the
good work, guys!

:DG<

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 1:06 AM, Adam Barth <abarth at webkit.org> wrote:
> In the wee hours of the morning, I turned on a new bot, which is the
> first part of the Early Warning System (EWS) that Eric and I have been
> building.  The EWS bots are very much like the style-queue, except
> they test compilation instead of style.
>
> == Executive Summary ==
>
> When a patch is posted for review, each EWS bot applies the patch
> locally and runs build-webkit.  If build-webkit succeeds, the bot does
> nothing.  If build-webkit fails, the bot adds a comment to the bug
> indicating the failure and posts a link to the build log.
>
> == Goals ==
>
> The goal of the EWS is to help us not break the build by providing an
> early warning for patches that break the build.  By posting the build
> output, the EWS should give contributors some idea how to fix the
> build even if they can't compile the broken port themselves.
>
> If you're especially interested in a particular port, you can
> subscribe to EWS notifications about that port.  When the EWS detects
> that a patch will break the build for that port, the EWS will
> automatically CC you on the bug.  Currently, I'm the only person
> subscribed to EWS notifications.  If you'd like to subscribe to a
> particular port, let me know.
>
> == Social Contract ==
>
> Like the style-queue, the EWS is purely advisory.  Contributors and
> reviewers are free to ignore the warnings if they believe the warnings
> are erroneous or they decide (for whatever reason) to break the build
> in question.
>
> == Frequently Asked Questions ==
>
> Q) What ports does the EWS support?
> A) The first EWS bot is for the Chromium port.  I have a bot for the
> Qt port working too, but the build time for the Chromium port was much
> shorter, so I'm starting with it.  My goal is to eventually have a bot
> for every port (although I haven't worked out the operational issues
> for non-Linux ports).
>
> Q) I wish the EWS supported the foobar port.  Can I run an EWS bot myself?
> A) Yes!  The EWS is fully distributed.  Anyone can run a EWS bot for
> whatever platform they're interested in.  The bots coordinate via a
> web service.  If you're serious about running an EWS bot for your
> port, let me know and we can make that happen.
>
> Q) Why doesn't the EWS post a success message?  I like positive re-enforcement.
> A) I'm worried about spamming bugs with too many happy status
> messages.  If we have N ports with EWS bots, we don't want to have N
> happy status messages.  Eric and I have some ideas for a more passive
> success indicator.  Once things are running smoothly, we can share
> some mocks with the list.
>
> Q) Why doesn't the bot run the LayoutTests?  I'd like to know when I
> break the LayoutTests on other platforms.
> A) We'd eventually like to run the LayoutTests, but we're starting
> with compilation because it's faster and easier.
>
> Q) How does the EWS differ from a try server?
> A) The EWS is similar to a try server farm, but the goal is different.
>  Developers frequently send experimental patches to try servers to see
> what happens.  When you post a patch for review, the expectation is
> that the patch has some chance of getting r+ed and landed.  That means
> EWS failures should be unusual and worth notifying the subscribers
> about.
>
> Q) How does the EWS deal with patches that don't apply cleanly to TOT?
> A) The EWS ignores them.  It's unclear whether a non-applying patch is
> good or bad.  It might just be dependent on another patch that hasn't
> been landed yet.  Our experience with the style-queue is that most
> patches apply to TOT when they're posted, so I don't think this is a
> big limitation.
>
> Let me know if you have any questions.  You can follow everything the
> bots do by subscribing to webkit-bot-watchers at googlegroups.com, but
> you'll mostly see a bunch of style-queue traffic because the
> style-queue is much noisier than the EWS.  We'll eventually turn
> <http://webkit-commit-queue.appspot.com/> into an awesome dashboard
> where you can see all the exciting things the bots are up to.
>
> Happy hacking!
> Adam
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