[tahoe-dev] new buildbot policy

[zooko]

Folks:

There are now two classes of builder: Supported and Unsupported.  The  
basic policy is that if a supported builder goes red then we fix it  
right away.

1.  It could be we just committed a patch that breaks Tahoe in a way  
that makes a test fail on that builder.  In this case we either:
1.a.   Revert that patch.
1.b.   Commit a new patch that fixes the previous patch (careful ...)

2.  It could be that the new patch doesn't break Tahoe, but that the  
unit tests incorrectly think it does, in which case we either:
2.a.  Commit a new patch that fixes the unit tests.
2.b.  Commit a new patch that marks that test as "skip" on that builder.

3.  It could be that something in the configuration of the build  
machine has changed which breaks Tahoe and/or Tahoe's unit tests.  In  
that case we either:
3.a.  Commit a new patch which makes Tahoe work on that new  
configuration.
3.b.  Get the administrator of that build machine to change the  
configuration so that Tahoe works again.

In any of these cases, we might be unable to resolve the redness in a  
timely manner.  In that case we demote that builder from the  
Supported Builders page to the Unsupported Builders page, as linked  
from here:

http://allmydata.org/buildbot/

"""
Supported Builders -- all the builders that we expect to keep green.  
If one of these reports a failure, we fix it right away.

Unsupported Builders -- the builders that we aren't currently  
committing to keep green: these are marginally-supported platforms  
which may have other reasons for failure that are beyond our control.  
Hopefully they will level-up to Supported Builders in the future,  
especially if you offer to help.

Full Waterfall Display -- the union of the previous two sets of builders
"""

The Unsupported Builders page currently has two residents: "Dan's  
ArchLinux" which has a very weird failure in some combination of  
Python/zope.interface/setuptools/zetuptoolz/setuptools_trial, and  
"zooko draco Mac/PPC", which is being newly added, so it is going to  
start life in the Unsupported Builders page until after the  
tahoe-1.3.0 release.

Regards,

Zooko

P.S.  Hm...  I'll add this to the Wiki:

http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/wiki/BuildbotPolicy