The BuildBot is a system to automate the compile/test cycle required by most software projects to validate code changes. By automatically rebuilding and testing the tree each time something has changed, build problems are pinpointed quickly, before other developers are inconvenienced by the failure. The guilty developer can be identified and harassed without human intervention. By running the builds on a variety of platforms, developers who do not have the facilities to test their changes everywhere before checkin will at least know shortly afterwards whether they have broken the build or not. Warning counts, lint checks, image size, compile time, and other build parameters can be tracked over time, are more visible, and are therefore easier to improve.

The overall goal is to reduce tree breakage and provide a platform to run tests or code-quality checks that are too annoying or pedantic for any human to waste their time with. Developers get immediate (and potentially public) feedback about their changes, encouraging them to be more careful about testing before checkin.

Features:

• run builds on a variety of slave platforms
• arbitrary build process: handles projects using C, Python, whatever
• minimal host requirements: python and Twisted
• slaves can be behind a firewall if they can still do checkout
• status delivery through web page, email, IRC, other protocols
• track builds in progress, provide estimated completion time
• flexible configuration by subclassing generic build process classes
• debug tools to force a new build, submit fake Changes, query slave status
• released under the GPL

Branching policies:

brian

follows brian's darcs branch (slowly -- darcs2git is not quick!)

dustin

contains patches not on brian, but is rebased onto brian periodically

one-oh

a fork; does not merge with other branches

We still haven't figured out a good workflow for occasional contributors. Suggestions are welcome on the mailing list!