[Scummvm-devel] Expanding buildbot

[Max Horn]

Hi folks,

currently we are only providing 1.3.0pre test builds on buildbot but not 1.4.0git test builds. This is so because doing a full build of all target platforms currently takes so long that doing it *twice* nightly (one for each branch) just is too long; it may not finish before the day wraps around, and let's not forget about the other regular builds that are going on there, too.

And I think it would be nice to offer both 1.3.x and 1.4.x builds in parallel. Right now, we could claim that we only offer 1.3.x builds on purpose, to force users to test that; but I actually don't like this kind of reasoning one bit: I don't want to force our users to something or treat them like idiots. It's fine by me to make the 1.3.x builds obvious and prominent and "hide" the 1.4.x builds a bit, if we want that; but other than that, I think it's good to have both in parallel. Especially when we start working on 1.3.1. 

Therefore, I would love to expand our buildbot, adding more horse power to it so that it can once more complete both nightly runs in one night. And in addition, regular builds would also complete faster. Luckily, buildbot is inherently scalable: You can add multiple build slaves into a build farm. So, we just need another server (or two ;).

Qvist is generously hosting our buildbot, and I am extremely grateful for that. But I was wondering if we could somehow obtain a second box to run as build server, and then couple that with the existing one to distribute the load. Maybe somebody here has a server "standing around" and can offer it. Or we could rent something somewhere. A virtual server / a VMWare instance are fine, I guess. In fact, it might be easiest to get this started by replicating the VMWare instance QVist is running (as that has all the toolchains installed), and then just modify the second instance sufficiently to turn it into a slave (and remove the doxygen stuff etc. etc.).


Ideas, suggestions, volunteers?
Max