[webkit-dev] A mechanism for detecting red bots (was Re: Yet another email about a broken tree)

[Adam Barth]

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 2:16 AM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:
> That being said, the mechanism I'd really like to see first is better
> notification of when the bot goes red (I suspect a number of people involved
> in today's redness didn't notice right away because there is no active
> notification system).

Eric and I are working on a system that does this (under the codename
"Smokey the Bear").  webkit-patch what-broke is our first attempt at
analyzing buildbot output, which we'll be improving iteratively.  Our
plan is for the bot to do the following:

1) Analyze buildbot output to find SVN revisions that broke things.
2) Ping the appropriate people on IRC (as determined by the ChangeLog).
3) Open a bug about the regressions, CCing the appropriate people (as
determined by the ChangeLog).
4) Attach a "rollout" patch to the bug to let committers rollback the
brokenness with one click.

We're also considering summarily rolling out patches committed by the
commit queue to further reduce the likelihood that the commit queue
breaks things.

Feedback welcome.

Adam