Difference between revisions of "COSMOS RE AND BUILD"

Revision as of 18:02, 17 December 2007

This page will hold information and links around Release Engineering and build for COSMOS.

Introduction

Build Overview

The COSMOS build is based on Eclipse PDE (Plug-in Development Environment). The Plug-in Development Environment (PDE) provides tools to create, develop, test, debug, build and deploy Eclipse plug-ins, fragments, features, update sites and RCP products. PDE is built atop the Platform and JDT, and ships as part of the Eclipse SDK. The goal of PDE Build is to facilitate the automation of plug-in build processes [3][4][5] . Essentially, PDE Build produces Ant scripts based on development-time information provided by, for example, the plugin.xml and build.properties files. The generated Ant scripts, can fetch the relevant projects from a CVS repository, build jars, Javadoc, source zips, put everything together in a format ready to ship and send it out to a remote location (e.g., a local network or a downloads server It runs in the eclipse server.

An automated nightly build runs everyday, the build can also be manually started. The COSMOS build status (Failed/Completed/Progress), build logs, build downloads, dependencies etc can be accessed through a web based dashboard. The builds dashboard is available at http://build.eclipse.org/technology/cosmos/downloads/builds.php

Build Environment
COSMOS build is performed on the eclipse server. The build initially fetch the build module from CVS to the workspace directory. The fetched build module contains various Bash/Ant scripts to perform the complete build. These Bash/Ant scripts broadly perform following functions:

1) Fetch plugins/features from CVS
2) Compile the fetched code to .class files
3) Assemble the .class files to .jar file
4) Package the jars as .zipped file
5) Publish the zipped files to COSMOS download page.

COSMOS Deliverables
Following are the deliverables, which are available at the cosmos downloads site: http://www.eclipse.org/cosmos/downloads/

1. SML validator and SML-IF Editor (Resource Modeling)
This package consists of an SML validator that validates SML and SML-IF files, an editor to create and validate SML-IF documents used to exchange information between systems management applications, and tools for importing and exporting SML data to and from a flat file repository.

2. Data Collection Framework
This package is a set of OSGi bundles and can execute in any OSGi container. This is packaged as set of plugins
Current OSGi Bundles in COSMOS: http://wiki.eclipse.org/COSMOS_DC_OSGi_Bundles

3. Data Reporting Web Application
This is a web application. It bundles the COSMOS Report Viewer and the COSMOS UI.

Build Process

This sections explains the following topics
1) Build Schedule
2) Build Types
3) Build Control & Management

1) Build Schedule
1a) Daily Builds
An automated build runs every 24 hours. The state of the head branch of the CVS repository will be labeled with a time stamp. The time stamp will be encoded with the release number, date, time, and serial build number, eg: COSMOS-RMm-YYMMDDHHMMSS. A module list will be maintained (in CVS) that lists all the modules that are part of the current build, labeling and extracting will be restricted to those modules.

1b) Manual Builds
Apart from the daily automated builds, a manual build can be started by those who are authorized to do so.
{TODO: How to start the manual build on eclipse server}

2) Build Types
The different types of builds available are:
2a) Development Builds
2b) Candidate Builds
2c) Stable Builds
2d) Release Builds

2a) Development Builds
All successful daily builds are published to the eclipse server as development builds. Development builds are produced from whatever has been released into the HEAD stream of the CVS repository. They are completely untested and may contain major problems. These drops are normally only useful to developers actually working on this project.

2b) Candidate Builds
Selected daily builds are promoted as candidate builds for testing, based on the iteration schedule. They can be promoted to either milestone or release builds.

2c) Stable Builds
Candidate builds which pass all the test phases & bugs fixed are flagged as stable builds. Stable builds are tested drivers delivered at the end of each iteration of the development cycle. The latest stable build is the right build for people who want to stay up to date with what is going on in the latest development stream, and don't mind putting up with a few problems in order to get the latest greatest features and bug fixes. Stable builds are also known as milestone builds

2d) Release Builds
According to the release schedule the stable builds are released to the community. Releases are builds that have been declared as major releases by the development team. Releases are the right builds for people who want to be on a stable, tested release.

Note: Tagged vs Untagged Builds
When a build is tagged, the artifacts used in build are tagged in CVS using the build ID. This is for easily reproducing the build if needed. All nightly builds are tagged builds. Manual builds have the option to run as tagged or untagged.

3) Build Control & Management
As explained above, the daily build starts automatically and the manual build has to be initiated by a person. If a build is in progress, another build cannot be started. A ".busy" file is created when the build starts and is removed automatically once it is over. The build output contains the deliverables, log files and reports.

The Release Engineering Team will be responsible for running the builds and tests to completion. In the event of problems with the build & test system, they are expected to be resolved as soon as possible and get the build and test restarted. In the event of problems with the build caused by developer checkins it is followed up with developers to ensure fixes are made quickly, and then the build and test are restarted. Any build failure will be reported through bugzilla to the build component for tracking the actual issue as well as trend analysis, etc. All committers are responsible for clean builds and tests. Anytime a check-in is made, the respective person is responsible for monitoring the builds and tests until they pass.

Publishing the build
At the end of a successful build, the build output is published to the eclipse server as development build, as part of the build process.

Once the build progress through the different phases, it evolves into stable or release builds. Changing the build can be done by editing the file www/cosmos/downloads/publish_1.0.0.txt in repository dev.eclipse.org:/cvsroot/org.eclipse

format: {development/candidate/stable}|{build id}|{comments}
eg: stable|COSMOS-1.0.0-200708171630|i5 stable build (Release 0.5)

Build Setup

The build is setup to run on the public eclipse server (http://build.eclipse.org/technology/cosmos/). You may check the build status or access the logs and builds using the build dashboard (http://build.eclipse.org/technology/cosmos/downloads/builds.php).

The following is a list of build dependencies:

Build Repositories (CVS)
1) dev.eclipse.org:/cvsroot/org.eclipse - www/cosmos (eclipse server web interface)
This is where the web pages are. You can add/modify the files here to make changes to the COSMOS related web pages in the public eclipse server (http://eclipse.org/cosmos)

2) dev.eclipse.org:/cvsroot/technology - org.eclipse.cosmos (build artifacts & rel engg)
If you want to make any changes to the build scripts, modify the files here. To setup build you should get the latest files from here. The entry point for build is make.sh.

Here is an example of how to start the build (after getting latest files to workspace):
make.sh --WORKSPACE_LOCK=/shared/technology/cosmos/workspace/.busy --WORKSPACE_ROOT=/shared/technology/cosmos/workspace/ --BUILD_ROOT=/shared/technology/cosmos/downloads --chkpii=NO --localconfig=/shared/technology/cosmos/config/local-build-config.sf --publish=NO --bldid=COSMOS_BUILD_ID --branch=HEAD --tagbld=NO --bldvbs=NO --prjid=COSMOS --relvrsn=1.0.0

If you are not making any changes(commit), you can always access the repository as follows:
Connection type: pserver
User - anonymous

The server supports both "extssh" and "pserver" type CVS connections. "pserver" only works for anonymous access.
You may also browse/download via any browser:
http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/org.eclipse.cosmos/?root=Technology_Project

Refer this wiki for more details of Eclipse CVS:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/CVS_Howto

Build Platform

Build is performed at the following environment:
Operating System – RedHat Enterprise Linux release 4 (Nahant Update 5)
Java – IBM Java 1.5 (ibm-java2-i386-50)

Adding/changing a dependency
Adding a new dependency or modifying an existing one is done by changing the following files:
a) build.properties - in dev.eclipse.org:/cvsroot/technology/org.eclipse.cosmos/releng/org.eclipse.cosmos.releng.builder/runtime
b) customTargets.xml - in dev.eclipse.org:/cvsroot/technology/org.eclipse.cosmos/releng/org.eclipse.cosmos.releng.builder/runtime

Adding/changing a component
TODO

Connecting CVS with SSH
The build machine includes an SSH client for accessing the CVS server. Different methods can be used to authenticate, depending on the level of functionality and security. Authentication methods used by the client by default are, in the following order: public-key, Keyboard-Interactive, and password authentication.

Public-key authentication allows the client to connect to a remote CVS server without sending the password. This is a more secure authentication method than password authentication. Public-key authentication uses two keys, a private key that it should be kept in a secure place and protected with a password. And the public key, is placed on the server (CVS), one wish to gain access to.

Reference:
[1] Eclipse SDK help
[2] http://www.sshkeychain.org/mirrors/SSH-with-Keys-HOWTO/SSH-with-Keys-HOWTO-4.html
[3] http://www.eclipse.org/pde/pde-build/
[4] http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-PDE-Automation/automation.html
[5] http://help.eclipse.org/help32/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.pde.doc.user/guide/tasks/pde_feature_build.htm

Build Contacts

The release engineering team is responsible for starting the build. In case of any build failure, please contact the release engg team. Following are the release engg team members:

IBM:
Balan Subramanian (bsubram at us.ibm.com)
Jagmit Singh (jagmits at ca.ibm.com)
Bobby Joseph (bobbyjoseph at in.ibm.com)

CA:
Leonard A Richardson (Leonard.Richardson at ca.com)

Links to Bugzilla

Open bugs against Release Engineering team