[kepler-dev] NMI builds

[Chad Berkley]

Hi,

I've been working on getting the NMI build working again and 
specifically, I've been trying to work out a way to allow different 
suites to run nightly builds on the NMI system.  I finally have 
something working that seems relatively easy to use (by NMI standards 
anyway).  There is a new task in the build system that allows you to 
build an NMI "run" for any given suite.  You can execute it with 'ant 
nmi -Dsuite=yourSuite'.  When you run it you'll see a directory created 
in build-area/resources/nmi/runs.  That directory will include all of 
the configuration files needed to run an NMI build.

I've put detailed instructions and documentation here: 
https://kepler-project.org/developers/teams/build/nmi-build-notes

Unfortunately, NMI requires an administrator (Matt, David or myself) to 
actually install the build on the submit host, but if you have a suite 
that you'd like to build every night, please let me know and I'd be 
happy to install it for you.

Right now, the builds are somewhat static (i.e. you create the NMI run 
and if the suite changes, the run will probably start failing, unless 
the configs are updated) but I'm working on a server side script to keep 
the runs up to date on the NMI machine.

This task at least lets us create as many NMI nightly builds as we want 
for whatever suites we want.  The JUnit and workflow tests are also now 
working so we can see the results of the tests.  Unfortunately, the 
results still cannot be emailed on a daily basis.  Hopefully the folks 
at NMI will get that implemented on their production server soon (it 
works on their dev server now).

The outputs of each run (i.e. the windows installer, the mac installer 
and the nightly "snapshot") are currently being uploaded to 
http://kepler-project.org/dist/nightly.  Other outputs can also be 
accommodated.  These files are deleted on a rotating 7 day basis.

You can see the status of all of the Kepler NMI runs here:
http://nmi-web.cs.wisc.edu/nmi/index.php?page=results%2Foverview&rows=20&opt_user=OPTION_SHOW_ALL&opt_type=OPTION_SHOW_ALL&opt_project=kepler&opt_result=OPTION_SHOW_ALL&opt_component=OPTION_SHOW_ALL&opt_month=0&opt_day=0&opt_year=0&opt_platform=OPTION_SHOW_ALL&opt_build_id=&opt_submit=OPTION_SHOW_ALL&opt_keyword=&searchSubmit=Search

Let me know if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.

Thanks,
chad