So, Martin and I took the discussion off-list briefly about the nightlies and I learned a bunch about what we have and a few more things about what Apache can help us with.
First off, I learned about Solaris Zones... It is a virtual machine, like VMWare, but a bit different in the implementation. The main aspect of it is that having a Struts Zone in apache is a lot like having our own Solaris 10 server. After logging in and poking around a bit (thanks to Martin for helping me get in), I am convinced that this is a heavily under-utilized resource for us. Right now, the nightly builds are generated in the struts zone, but I'd really like to enhance this process a bit. I got to thinking about it and I think the problems we've been having with both the nightlies and bamboo are parallel. In both cases, we have a single point of failure. By that, I mean, we depend on individual developers (volunteers in our case) to manage components. So, what I would like to do is utilize this zone to create a CI and test-bed for Struts. Since a zone is a VM, I am not sure yet whether we would load the host machine to a point where infrastruct...@a.o will notice, but looking at other zones, I think we'll be okay. The nightly build that we are currently running in the zone is done by shell scripts through cron. Although it works, this makes it impossible for me to change the schedule. I like what was done, but I think we can improve on it quite a bit. In a nutshell, what I would like to do is run two instances of tomcat on the zone. The first instance will host Hudson, which we will configure to perform CI for us. The second instance will host our reference apps (struts2-blank, struts2-showcase, etc.). Hudson can be configured to deploy the apps when they are built. I would also like to setup Archiva, since some of the problems we've been seeing in Bamboo appear to be Maven related. I've already got most of the details worked out in my head and will document the setup in the wiki. But, one thing that I'm looking for feedback on is the users/roles setup for Hudson and Archiva. There are plugins for Hudson allowing for users/roles, but I'm wondering if there is a way for us to set it up so that Hudson just knows that a person is an apache struts committer. Martin mentioned that there has been talk in the past of an ASF-wide ApacheDS instance, which if it exists, would be great as I could just setup Tomcat to use that and then use Container Managed Security. If there is no existing store for account information, we can still setup the accounts ourselves, but I'd like to avoid this since we would likely end up back in the same situation if one or just a few people are owners and no one else is able to massage builds. I don't mind doing the setup myself and I'm not necessarily asking for help, but what I want to do is be conscious of the fact that I may not always be available. Hudson seems like a good choice to me since I was able to set it up with a fresh install of Tomcat last night and successfully build struts2 (all profiles) in a matter of minutes. There are a few other considerations. For instance, apache has a Hudson Zone setup currently that other projects are using. There is some information here - http://wiki.apache.org/general/Hudson http://hudson.zones.apache.org/hudson/ Using this hudson has advantages and disadvantages Adv. - Not our resource, we don't have to worry about updates, outages, restarts, etc. Disadv. - Not our resource, we may or may not be able to make changes to the container, add plugins, etc. Also, The struts builds seem to be pretty complex. I am not sure about the other projects currently in there, but there are some of our artifacts that are pretty big. Currently, struts2-mumble-all.zip is now over 100MB. Lastly, to get an account on the hudson zone, it seems like you might have to be a PMC. I want to make this a usable resource for all committers. Since Martin was able to get me on the struts zone, and I'm not a PMC, it seems like this might make it easier for people to get in and do what might need done for struts. Another consideration is whether or not to publish the builds to people.a.o. I mean, it's nice that the download is available to the public, but if we're setting this up, there may be no need. We could simply point people to http://struts.zones.apache.org/wherever_we_drop_artifacts and be done. So, I'd like to know what people think and if they have suggestions for how they'd like to see this done. I'm not steadfastly sticking to Hudson at this point, it just seemed easy, so if someone thinks cruisecontrol, continuum or whatever might be a better choice, let me know. -Wes PS. GO BEARCATS! (I don't think there are other Ohio committers on the list, but as an ex-UC student, I'm typing this while watching Bearcats in their first BCS bowl appearance, w00t!) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@struts.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@struts.apache.org
