Queue's Functionality (Bug?)

[Alex]

Ok, I have a few Queue's with a lot of projects in them, so this may
not be evident to a lot of people. But what I noticed today troubles
me, in fact I would call it a bug. So if the ifModifcations has placed
a project on the queue and it is in line and you force a build CC will
throw away the force build. Therefore, if no modifications existed
even if you force you may not get a build. This is really hard on me
as the projects spend a lot of time in the queue so you really have to
time your forced builds in some cases. I think when a forced build
request comes in, if anything gets kicked out of the cube it should be
the ifmodifications that is already there. Thoughts anyone?

[DaveMoor]

I have the same issue but from the other side. I have a few projects
which force dependent projects, if the dependents are queued waiting
to check for modifications when the 'parent' tries to force them they
do not get built so my builds get out of sync.

This happens every time on one of my project groups as the parent
takes so long to build all its children are waiting to check for
modifications. This has been raised before, I was waiting to upgrade
to version 1.4 to see if things had changed in this area.

Dave

[Kittu]

Hi There

I had the same issue and we areusing CC 1.4 for our CI, I think using
the forcebuild in trigger will workout around this problem.
what you say?

Kishore

[Craig Sutherland]

Hello all,

I've gone and had a look at the way that the queue functionality works
(I've posted on it at http://csut017.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/an-introduction-to-queues/).

Basically this is intentional behaviour - since we don't want
duplicate projects in the queue any subsequent build requests (whether
force build or otherwise) are discarded.

The real question is should we set a precedence of build requests
(i.e. should ForceBuilds be considered more important than
IfModificationExists). If a higher precedence request is received,
then we would overwrite the lower precedence request? Any comments?


Craig

[Arieh Schneier]

We have the same issue...

I definitely think that higher precedence requests should overwrite
lower precedence. The point (I believe) of force build when the build
is in the queue already, is to say, that whether or not there are
changes I want it to build again. So it should either throw away the
old request, or mark the old request as forced...

Arieh.

[Daniel Hommel]

Craig Sutherland writes:
> The real question is should we set a precedence of build requests
> (i.e. should ForceBuilds be considered more important than
> IfModificationExists). If a higher precedence request is received,
> then we would overwrite the lower precedence request? Any comments?

FYI, seems like an issue for this topic was opened already (CCNET-1095)
and a patch is attached.

Personally i think giving a force build request a higher priority than
an interval trigger request makes sense. What i don't know is if it can
lead to problems if an interval trigger request gets removed from the
queue in favor of a force build request.

regards,

Daniel

[Alex]

I agree, a force build should have precedence, I will give the patch a
try and see how she goes. Thanks for pointing it out Daniel

[Craig Sutherland]

Hello all,

We've now put a patch into the code to change the behaviour of queues
with respect to force builds. You'll need to get the application from
the nightly builds and then configure your queues as described at
http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CCNET/Queue+Configuration.

Thanks to Daniel Hommel and James Chaldecott for their help on this
one.


Craig

[Alex]

woot! thanks that is good news