[OpenAFS-devel] Migrating Fedora Build Slaves -- which to keep?

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

On Sun, November 6, 2016 9:26 pm, Benjamin Kaduk wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 06, 2016 at 09:08:36PM +0100, Stephan Wiesand wrote:
>> Hi Derek,
>>
>> On Nov 5, 2016, at 20:38 , Derek Atkins wrote:
>>
>> > I guess the question is: for how long after a release is EOLed should
>> we
>> > keep the build server around?  Is there a general OpenAFS build server
>> > policy for how long to keep a build slave around?  If not, should we
>> > have a policy?

It turns out that I had decommissioned FC19.   The VM had been turned off
for a while; I'm not sure why.  But since nobody complained, I'll leave it
that way.

>> I doubt that there's a policy. From the point of view of someone
>> pressing the submit button based on code review and buildbot
>> verification: the more the marrier, as long as a build slave is reliable
>> and not terribly slow.
>>
>> I don't think we should spend effort on supporting obsolete
>> distributions. But we sure don't deliberately break them. And every
>> successful build on a different distro, with a different tool chain and
>> against a different kernel is an important data point for judging the
>> correctness of a change.
>>
>> If keeping an old build slave alive keeps you from developing/submitting
>> changes, reviewing other's, testing prereleases etcetc, that would be a
>> good reason to cull it and rather spend the time on those other
>> activities. Otherwise, well, please see above.
>
> I agree with Stephan's points.  In terms of triaging which VMs to keep (if
> there
> is a need to cull), we definitely get benefit from the bleeding-edge
> systems,
> to pick up new compilers and their compiler warnings (as well as their new
> kernels, though hopefully we will be on top of that already).  There is
> also value
> in the old(est) sytems as a sort of regression test, though I don't think
> I
> have any examples where those would actually catch anything, so maybe
> that's
> just a red herring.
>
>> Whatever you decide to keep or cull, thanks a lot for providing those
>> build slaves all along!
>
> Seconded!

It took me literally 15-20 minutes to migrate the FC22 VM.  FC23 took
longer, but only because there was a bug in the migration tools (which
were fixed upstream in January of this year but not propagated down, yet
-- I installed a pre-release package to get the fix).  Once it's up there
is very little effort on my part.

Based on this feedback I'll migrate FC21 and FC20, but leave FC19 offline.

FC25 should be online in about 10 days, once the release happens and I can
download the DVD ISO.

Thanks,

> -Ben

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek@ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant