Re: Build mailing list

[Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl>]

On Thu, Dec 09, 2010 at 07:23:23PM +0100, Piñeiro wrote:
> From: Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl>
> 
> 
> > On Thu, Dec 09, 2010 at 06:04:17PM +0100, Piñeiro wrote:
> >>   ACTION: Investigate setting up mail notification (bkor, api)
> > [..]
> >> So, the purpose of this mail is start to coordinating it, and not
> >> forget this. AFAIK, Olav is in holidays, so this can be slow.
> > 
> > I'm back.
> 
> So now it would be slow because of me ;)

:D

> >> Olav, is this enough or the mail from the buildbot should have a
> >> specific format?
> > 
> > For the topic bit in Mailman to work, put in something like:
> > Keywords: projectname
> > 
> > E.g.
> > Keywords: evolution
> > 
> > when it is regarding an evolution build problem.
> 
> A newer version of buildbot (0.8) include the parameter extraHeaders
> [2], not included on the version that we are using. Anyway, I guess
> that this is in order to instantiate a Notifier and provide always the
> same headers. So I guess that this would just involve redefine
> "buildMessage" on the notifier [3]. I will confirm that once I have
> time to do that.

I just checked and there is a configuration parameter:
| topics_bodylines_limit (topics): How many body lines should the topic
| matcher scan?
| 
| The topic matcher will scan this many lines of the message body looking
| for topic keyword matches. Body scanning stops when either this many
| lines have been looked at, or a non-header-like body line is
| encountered. By setting this value to zero, no body lines will be
| scanned (i.e. only the Keywords: and Subject: headers will be scanned).
| By setting this value to a negative number, then all body lines will be
| scanned until a non-header-like line is encountered. 

The Subject is likely messy. As currently the regexp for commits-list
has ^projectname$ (meaning: exact matches only). And body lines scanning
I'd likely would disable if not needed (speeds things up).

Anyway, you could put a keywords header in the 1st line of the body.
Perhaps easier than a buildbot upgrade?

> > So:
> > ACTION: Provide a text/plain list of possible projectnames on
> >         build.gnome.org so I can automatically update the Mailman (API)
> >         configuration via Cron (like commits-list + git.gnome.org).
> 
> Well the projectnames came from jhbuild, so this should be just add a
> way to get a file using "jhbuild list", ie in the current
> build.gnome.org, "gnome-apps-3.0" became a link to this list. Right?

Yes. Just give the output of jhbuild list of the configuration for
build.gnome.org. Suggest to update hourly or so. Then even when the
mailing list only updates once a day, we'll be sure it receives the
latest changes.

> > ACTION: Create mailing list (me)
> > ACTION: Create cron job (me)
> > ACTION: Make build.gnome.org send emails to the mailing list (API)
> > 
> > Then very important not to generate the same emails each time. If you
> > informed once, I don't want to see it every hour or so.
> 
> I took a brief loot to buildbot documentation [1], and you have the
> 'mode' paramater:
> 
> mode - one of:
> 
>     * 'all': send mail about all builds, passing and failing
>     * 'failing': only send mail about builds which fail
>     * 'problem': only send mail about a build which failed when the previous build passed
> 
> I guess that we are looking for 'problem', so this shouldn't be
> problematic.

Yes, seems exactly what we want. Though I do like some nagging to be
going on. But later worry.

> And about configuration, as you can also configure if the build log is
> included or not, should we include the log on the mail (so bigger
> mails)?

Think that would speed things up, so think it is good to include. Does
it somehow limit it to like the last 1000 lines or so?

Usually only the last 50 messages max would be useful, rest is just
stuff to scroll through. So 1000 is a good safe margin :)

-- 
Regards,
Olav