Moving to Buildbot

[W. Martin Borgert]

Hi,

after using Bitten for about five years, I replaced it with
Buildbot for my software projects. Reasons:

- I changed my projects from SVN to Git and Bitten speaks only
SVN out-of-the-box, while Buildbot supports all major VCSes.

- In general, Buildbot seems to have a lot of more features to
offer than Bitten. Buildbot has a large, active community.
Btw. they use Trac themselves.

- I personally like hacking in Python and Buildbots
configuration is pure Python. It lets you do anything you
can do in Python, while Bitten is limited to the XML recipes.

- It is easier to do things like supporting multiple branches.
Even automatic branch building should be possible, but I
didn't try yet.

What do I miss?

- Trac integration: Builds in the Trac timeline, waterfall view
directly in Trac etc.

Do I recommend the switch to others?

- Only if you like to use Git or Hg. Or if you have special
build needs that justify hacking Buildbots master.cfg instead
of using XML recipes.

- If Bitten works well for you, there is no need to change.

Good-bye Bitten, and thanks for serving well all the years!

[osimons]

Thank you for your time and efforts with the Bitten project over the years! Much appreciated.

As for your reasons and summary it all looks accurate and understandable from my point of view. Bitten needs a major overhaul to fully support DVCS backends. The current model depends on single path + single parent linear revision log, and dropping these assumptions will take a lot of work. That said, I successfully use both git and mercurial (hg) repositories myself and have no problem using them with Bitten as long as I stay within the bounds of the "central repository model" with a simple clean history branches and repositories.

Sadly, I doubt I will get Bitten redone anytime soon. The project needs fresh talent...


:::simon