[Twisted-Python] To those who are about to sprint

[exarkun at twistedmatrix.com]

On 12:05 am, glyph at twistedmatrix.com wrote:
>
>On Aug 19, 2012, at 3:49 PM, exarkun at twistedmatrix.com wrote:
>>On 03:48 am, glyph at twistedmatrix.com wrote:
>>>
>>>For the next sprint, our BuildBot maintainer has assured me that 
>>>he'll
>>>be moving the build master infrastructure to a faster machine before
>>>then, so that hopefully it will cope better with the increased load 
>>>of
>>>a sprint.
>>
>>Slave capacity really needs to be increased as well to handle sprint
>>load.
>
>The major problem with buildbot overload at sprints is the fact that 
>the website becomes so unresponsive that unrelated activity can't take 
>place, e.g. in the bugtracker, for long periods of time.
>
>Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the buildmaster and website are 
>separated, won't that address that problem?

This is entirely possible, I'm not sure.  It may also be the case that 
trac by itself generates sufficient load at sprints to become unusable. 
We'll find out soon, I guess.
>Also, won't the buildmaster evenly work through the backlog of 
>submitted builds, finishing one every few minutes?  Or does some 
>parallel stuff happen that makes subsequent builds progressively worse?

Generally not.  Instead, the buildmaster will corrupt its local state, 
wedge itself into non-responsiveness, or enter an infinite loop. 
Additionally, it will direct one or more slaves to disconnect, crash, or 
at least corrupt (slave local) kernel state such that a sysadmin needs 
to restart the machine.

Jean-Paul