[U-Boot] [PATCH 2/2] WIP: Test version of buildman - U-Boot builder

[Simon Glass]

Hi Wolfgang,

On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 3:51 PM, Tom Rini <trini at ti.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 11:46:23PM +0100, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
>> Dear Simon Glass,
>>
>> In message <1351718752-6832-2-git-send-email-sjg at chromium.org> you wrote:
>> > This tool handles building U-Boot to check that you have not broken it
>> > with your patch series. It can build each individual commit and report
>> > which boards fail on which commits, and which errors come up. It aims
>> > to make full use of multi-processor machines.
>> >
>> > Buildman is not yet ready for prime time. I am posting it now to obtain
>> > feedback as to its operation and bugs, and to hopefully attract patches for
>> > these. It does some incorrect things, crashes, hangs, and use lots of disk
>> > space.
>>
>> Can you please explain a bit if or how this is related to MAKEALL?
>> At first (_very_ sshort) glance it appears to be a completely
>> different tool - but then, do we need two separate tools for
>> appearently pretty similar purposes?
>
> I'll let Simon explain what Buildman handles better/worse than MAKEALL
> but my 2 cents is that MAKEALL is like patchwork in that it's a tool we
> all use and many of us wish was better about X/Y/Z.  Unlike patchwork,
> it's bothered various folks enough to get changes made (Joe and his
> bugfixes last night, I've pastebin'd my wrapper a number of times,
> Simon has this tool going).

Yes...it's mostly for building a list of commits (e.g. an entire
branch) and automatically tracking and showing what boards break
between commits. It is optimised for this - e.g. it can build 22
commits for 1000 boards (22,000 builds) in about an hour on a fast
machine, which is a few times faster than I have managed with MAKEALL.
If run a second time it doesn't rebuild commits it has already done,
which can save time. Also it handles the toolchains mostly
automatically.

It is a completely different tool, yes, but I have found myself using
it instead of what I previously used: MAKEALL plus Mike's 'buildall'
wrapper. The main thing I like about it is that it quickly shows me
which builds are broken by which commits, and what the errors were.

I have posted it since it's not a lot of use having it privately - it
might be useful to others.

Regards,
Simon

>
> --
> Tom