400881 - make try server support 1.8 builds

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Release Engineering :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

It's come to my attention that the try server doesn't properly support 1.8 branch builds. There's a couple issues:
1) Some of the packaging methods (particularly .tar.bz2 on Linux) don't seem to work the same on branch as they do on trunk.
2) The toolchain on the win32 slave (VC8) isn't supported on 1.8. It gets an xpt_link error that I can't seem to work work around.

We may have to have a different windows slave for branch, I'd like to avoid that if possible though. Maybe VC6 can be put on the existing one?

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Not sure how you launch the slave, but if you're launching it from inside a start-msvc8.bat environment you'd have to have two slaves or special environment handling to make both VC6 and VC8 work on the same box.

Is support for the branch really important?

Comment 2

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

Yeah, I was thinking that two slaves will be run on the same machine and use a SlaveLock to make sure they're not building at the same time.

If this is going to take a ton of effort it probably isn't worthwhile doing. But if it's just 1) install vc6, 2) create new buildbot slave (on the same machine) it may be worthwhile. There's currently only one person pulling from MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH, there could be more in the future.

Comment 3

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

> Is support for the branch really important?

Yes ... and not just because I'd benefit :-)

Firstly, the 1.8 branch is still current, even though less development
is taking place there than on the trunk.  But what development does
take place there tends to be urgent (to fix serious bugs), and is
often cross-platform.  So it'd be _really_ nice to have a quick way to
test a patch on all three platforms, and (almost as important) to
distribute the test builds to other people.

Not many developers can build on all three platforms, and not many
have a server where they can post their builds.  Though meeting these
needs may not have been part of the try servers' original design, I
think this is what makes them most useful.

Secondly, I have a patch for a security-sensitive 1.8-branch bug (bug
397707) that's cross-platform, and for which I need all three try
servers.  I can build on OS X, but not on Linux or Windows.  And the
bug's reporter can't build on any platform.

I've managed (in my patch) to hack the 1.8-branch makefiles enough to
get my patch to build on OS X and Linux.  But the Windows problems are
more serious, and I won't be able to work around them.

Comment 4

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

Attachment: Patch supplement for building 1.8 branch on tryservers

Here's what people need to add to their patches if they want to do a
1.8-branch build on the tryservers (as currently configured).

It works fine for OS X and Linux builds.  It would work fine for
Windows builds if not for the fact that the tryserver's Windows build
tools (particularly VC8) can't (apparently) be used to do 1.8-branch
builds.

That this patch works (at least on OS X and Linux) suggests to me that
it'd be very easy to change the tryservers' scripts to accomodate
1.8-branch builds.  I suspect you'd only have to do the following:

1) Change the script that currently invokes "make package" so that
   instead it invokes "make -C browser/installer".

2) For Linux builds, change the script that copies the package to its
   final destination so that it's happy with files that end in either
   *.bz2 or *.tar.gz.

Comment 5

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

Addtion step for those who want to build (on OS X or Linux) on the 1.8
branch (I forgot to mention it earlier):

You need to upload a mozconfig file containing the following two lines:

  ac_add_options --enable-static
  ac_add_options --disable-shared

(By the way, when you upload a mozconfig file with the tryserver web
interface, it should _not_ be a standalone mozconfig file.  Rather,
this file should contain lines you want the tryserver to add to its
own mozconfig file (at the bottom).)

Comment 7

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

Given the cost/benefit of either a) adding a second set of slaves for the 1.8 branch, or b) adding vc6 to the try server slaves I'm going to WONTFIX this.

Comment 8

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

Moving try server bugs to the new component.

Comment 9

[:Gijs (he/him)]

For the record, this would be useful for testing JSD branch fixes as well. I'm pretty sad this got WONTFIXed - if we can't have Windows support because of vc nastiness, could we at least consider the patch Steven did so we have linux and mac support? That'd still be an improvement over the current situation.

Comment 10

[[e-mail] (:bhearsum)]

You're welcome to use the patch that Steven made; apply it to your tree before you diff. Unfortunately there are higher priority things on my plate right now, I'm sorry :(.