Matt Brubeck wrote:
>>
>> I really felt that I couldn't land code without other people doing my
>> deeds to make that code stick to the tree.
>
> It sounds like we need better documentation for how to deal with test
> failures in tinderbox (or we need to make the existing documentation
> easier to find). I had to pick up this knowledge mostly by poking
> around and trying things, and asking in #developers whenever I couldn't
> figure something out. There have also been training courses (there was
> one at a 2010 All Hands week), but I couldn't easily find materials from
> them online.
I believe I'm the relative newcomer 'round these parts so what I say
might seem 'stupid' or ignorant, of which I do apologize beforehand.
I've been 'watching' the tbpl and #developer for practically 1 1/2 years
(off and on) and I'm still ignorant in the ways of the tree. Sure,
there is a legend and it clearly marks what is what and what colour
means what. However, I'm still no where near the level of understand-
ing to figure out the ins-and-outs of the tree. In other words,
it's highly complicated; kinda like rocket science.
I am sure that if I just sat and watched the veteran-devs (people that
come to mind is philor and bz) that do the starring (but not asking
questions as that'd probably interrupt the flow), I'd probably have
a chance of figuring it out within my lifetime. At the get go when
I was first exposed to the tbpl (1 tree with quite a bit of characters
but not as much as now), I was overwhelmed and I believe I asked someone
whether or not there was some documentation on this whole thing. Simple
answer back then was, "No."
But right now, your procedure does help (now that I got my L3 access)
to understand when to push. However the documentation on what/how to
help star builds is still lacking (IMO). I realize this is all by
experience, but if this experience isn't written down, philor et. al
will most likely take the brunt of the job of doing the starring.
(No offense to anyone else that I've forgotten to mention).
As an anecdote, I tried my go of starring a build for the comm-central
(specifically the CalendarTrunk, which was burning like there was no
tomorrow). My first problem. What do I do first? I took a look
at the full log of the burning build. I noticed the trend with the
other burnings, so I went to bugzilla and filed a bug. (fwiw,
bug #714016) I took a look at other burning bugs from m-c and
basically noticed it was just a post of the log in the comment.
So I pasted a link to the log into the comments. Next problem,
how do I add the bug # to the burning red B?(I think the terminology
is star the red build) I asked on #developers and darktrojan (thanks!)
said "put bug <#>" in the comments. I did that. And that was
my first experience with starring a red build. Of course, there is
a chance that a "clobber" would solve the issue. I wouldn't know
and those who are in the know are usually offline when I'm online.
Now this begs the questions. Should I have done that? Should I have
asked someone else whether or not I should do star the build? I looked
at the CalendarTrunk and it was burning for sometime. Was there a
reason why no one starred any build? Did I overstep the boundaries of
what I should/should not do?
(My calendar build just finished and I definitely can reproduce the
broken build, so it isn't a clobber-required, but a coding issue.)
> I've tried to document what I know and make it accessible, for example,
> by bringing the "Tree Rules" and "Committing Rules and Responsibilities"
> pages up to date, and adding links to them in prominent places. There's
> certainly more information that's not on those pages and I don't know
> exactly which information people need or want. If you run into
> situations that aren't covered in those pages, please (a) ask what to
> do, and (b) help me make sure the answers get added to the help pages!
Do the rules apply to m-c, m-i and c-c? Or are they specific to m-c?
Now I understand that there is a lack of resources in the c-c camp
that 'we' can't star everything. I believe Callek's doing something
along the lines of fixing this.
>
> The process for watching the tree is not *that* involved. It becomes
> much easier if you do it regularly, which means that the few people who
> do it most often are now very efficient at it, and we may end up relying
> on them too heavily because everyone else feels that it's not worth
> learning to do it themselves. But it's really a very simple process
> that you *can* do yourself, and the experienced tree watchers will still
> be there to help you.
I don't know if I've mentioned this anywhere (aside for IRC), but
#developers is an intimidating channel. It's like walking into
an ATC and asking "what are those blips on the screen?".
(Of course, it's not comparable to the life-or-death situation
as in the ATC, but the feeling is similar.)
Again, no offense to anyone. It's a good experience watching
people on #developers interact, even though I have no clue as
to what's going on.
Edmund