221448 - Add tinderbox3 component.

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(bugzilla.mozilla.org :: Administration, task)

Description

[Christian Reis]

John Keiser did an amazing job putting together Tinderbox3, but unfortunately it
has no bugs, since there's no component for them to be filed in. 

The way I see it, every work of software needs bugs. Could we please add a
Tinderbox3 component and allow it to blossom into (predestined) greatness?

Comment 1

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

How about I just add three versions: Tindexbox1, Tinderbox2, Tinderbox3.
And we can then move all the tinderbox bugs to one component.

Are Tinderbox1 and 2 still in development at all?

Comment 2

[Christian Reis]

I'm not sure if they are still under development, let me run a cvs log check.
Yes, Tinderbox2 is still active development -- last checkin was at 2003-08-18 00:44

I don't think adding versions is a good idea based on the fact that the three
are pretty much completely different products. Tinderbox3 and Tinderbox2 have
very divergent codebases, and they aren't very likely to merge, ever.

Is there a problem with adding an extra component? I may be doing a fair amount
of work on tbox3 in the near future, so it would be nice to have this set up.

Comment 3

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

No, no problem. Just didn't want to have lots of dead components about.

Which of the three tinderboxes is the official one? Can't we just use the
"tinderbox" component for Tinderbox3? Why do we have two different versions of
this in development at once?

If nobody is using the Tinderbox1 component, and Tinderbox3 is going to replace
Tinderbox1 as the main tinderbox system, then we should just use that. We don't
add new components every time we ship a new version of Mozilla. :-)

Comment 4

[Christian Reis]

You're getting into a rat's nest <wink>. I'll try and explain: there are
multiple versions/forks/rewrites of tinderbox that are *all* live and in use
today. The original code is in use on mozilla.org, for instance, so it should
still get updates every once in a while (to keep it chugging along). 

There's a separate work called Tinderbox2 by Ken Estes. This is used in a number
of installations and has been recently featured in STQE. Ken still does
development on this.

John Keiser wrote Tinderbox3. It has some pretty unique features: patch
distribution, cycling through multiple clients, incremental build information,
automatic client updates, PostgreSQL support and more. It's not running on
mozilla.org (yet) but there are installations running this code (and liking it).
I think of the three it's the most interesting design, but it's not production
code yet.

As to *why* these forks occured, I'm not sure. It's a very peculiar case of
ultra-fragmentation -- hell, even Zach wrote an extra Tinderclient package for
perl.org. I would love to see these unify, but I think this is a long-term
project. I expect Tinderbox1 to die eventually, but it's still being used, so we
need a component for it.

To exemplify, yesterday me and jkeiser discussed a bug that had been reported to
bear, but to the Tinderbox component. Tinderbox1 doesn't even have the code in
question, and we never looked at it; luckily, bear notified us on IRC.

If you ask me, this is a special situation that *warrants* multiple components;
nowhere else have I seen such fragmentation, and it's not something we're going
to fix by implementing a single Bugzilla component (unfortunately).

Comment 5

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

Ok, I'm convinced. Who should be the default assignee? Do you have any QA?

Comment 6

[Christian Reis]

I suggest the default assignee should be [e-mail], I can volunteer as
default QA. 

Comment 7

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

John? Will you be able to work on Tinderbox3 in the coming weeks/months?

Comment 8

[Ken Estes]

Christian Reis was exactly on target with his comments.

I am not really up to date on what is going on with
mozilla.org but shouldn't mcafee and asa be CC'ed
on these tinderbox3 issues as well? They were 
my contacts for all Tinderbox2 issues.

Comment 9

[Christian Reis]

Sure.

Comment 10

[John Keiser (jkeiser)]

Yes, I'm willing to take ownership of the module.  I will be able to work on
tbox3 over the coming months; I worked that out with my new employer before I
hired on.

Comment 11

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

Excellent!

Comment 12

[timeless]

vrfy fixed