[Twisted-Python] Windows build slaves

exarkun at twistedmatrix.com exarkun at twistedmatrix.com
Thu Mar 24 11:15:51 EDT 2011


On 19 Mar, 03:08 am, gxti at partiallystapled.com wrote:
>Greetings,
>
>I hear that Twisted needs some new/better/more reliable Windows build
>slaves. My employer has plenty of ESX capacity, and I know that a few
>other people are interested in helping out as well, so perhaps this a
>good time to clarify the requirements:
>
>Which platforms: XP and 7? 32bit and 64bit? Any interest in the server
>editions?
>
>Per-machine requirements: how much HDD and RAM? Any weird stuff like
>serial ports?
>
>Connectivity: Is NAT OK, or are inbound connections required?
>
>Do maintainers need access to the hypervisor, or is it adequate to have
>a watchdog to reboot crashed slaves?
>
>Contingent on employer approval, I can donate 4 VMs (one of each 
>flavor)
>with 2GiB of RAM and tens of GB storage each, including MSDN licenses.
>The limitations are that they would be on a NAT-only subnet with no
>possibility of inbound ports, and that there would be no hypervisor
>access. However, I can provide a watchdog to deal with crashed slaves
>and a VPN could be arranged if there's a public endpoint I can direct 
>it
>to. I'm also "generally pretty accessible" although Glyph 
>unsurprisingly
>indicates that people have failed to live up to that promise in the 
>past
>:P   The offer is flexible, I'm just trying to start small to feel out
>the requirements.

Hello Michael and other prospective build slave operators :)

Twisted is ever in need of more slaves.  We can only support the 
platforms that we have slaves for, so that any developer can test their 
code on any of those platforms any time they need to.  So offers of new 
slaves are always appreciated. :)

Slave requirements are covered on 
http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/ContinuousIntegration and 
http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/ContinuousIntegration/TestSlaveConfiguration 
but I'll restate some of the important points here:

  * The slave host needs to be on all the time
  * It only needs to be able to make outgoing connections (so NAT is 
fine)
  * It doesn't need much storage, just enough for the base operating 
system
    plus a little for Twisted's dependencies and a check out of the 
Twisted
    source and some log files.
  * It doesn't need much RAM, just enough to be able to run Twisted's 
test
    suite - 768 MB is typically quite ample (I suspect it can be done 
with
    less if necessary)
  * Extra stuff like serial ports can be cool - Twisted is seriously 
lacking
    in proper test coverage for its serial port code at the moment. :)

Remote access to the machine for Twisted developers is preferred, but 
it's not strictly necessary.  If it isn't provided, it is sometimes 
necessary to have someone who does have access prod the slave in case it 
wedges (which doesn't happen very often, though more often on Windows 
than other platforms).  Other solutions to this, like the watchdog 
Michael mentioned, are also possible.

If you have some hardware (or spare ESX capacity, or even if you want to 
try to do something creative with Amazon EC2!) and this all sounds 
doable, please let us know!

Thanks Michael, and anyone else who can offer hosting for these slaves!

Jean-Paul



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