The autobuild tools are a set of perl scripts, perl modules and XML configuration files to automatically build our projects on multiple platforms. The tools run on Unix (several flavors) and Windows NT/2k/XP.

1. perl 5.6.1 or higher

2. Libwww-perl module. You can get this from http://www.cpan.org. Red Hat Linux distributions may have an optional package perl-libwww-perl.

1. Check out the latest build scripts from git using:

   git clone https://github.com/DOCGroup/autobuild
   

2. Look at the existing XML configuration files in autobuild/configs/autobuild/*. Create a new XML configuration for your build and customize it according to your local site.

   In the <configuration></configuration> section, you can set environment variables like ACE_ROOT, PATH, CVSROOT, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc. For example:

     <environment name="ACE_ROOT"        value="/export/bugzilla/Minimum_newbuild/ACE_wrappers" />
   

   The "root" variable is important. It is the root of all future "file_manipulation" commands.

   The "configs" variable should contain a space-separated list of -Config options that are passed to auto_run_tests.pl. For Windows, it should include Win32.

   The "make_program" variable enabled you to specify a different executable to call for make.

3. In the <configuration></configuration> section, specify the directory where to place the log files from the build. Ideally this directory should be accessible by a web server, so that you can see the log files via http. For example:

     <variable name="log_root" value="/home/bugzilla/.www-docs/auto_compile_logs/curufin_SingleThreaded" />
   

4. To run the build, you run autobuild.pl with the XML config file as the argument:

     autobuild.pl Debian_Minimum_Static.xml
   

5. To update a scoreboard, you run scoreboard.pl with input xml as the argument:

     scoreboard.pl -d [Output directory where the html files are placed]
                   -f [name and path of the XML file that needs
                       to be used as a meta-file for HTML
                       generation]
                   -o [name of the output file. The html file will
                       be saved by this name and placed in the
                       directory pointed by -d].
   

1. In the <configuration></configuration> section, you set shell environment variables with the following tag:

    <environment name="ENV VARIABLE NAME"  value="ENV VARIABLE VALUE" />
   

2. In the <configuration></configuration> section, you set Perl global variables with the following tag:

    <variable name="PERL GLOBAL VARIABLE NAME"  value="VARIABLE VALUE" />
   

3. Outside the configuration section, commands are specified with the following tag:

    <command name="COMMAND NAME" options="COMMAND OPTIONS" />
   

   Each command is located in Perl modules in the autobuild/command directory. If you look in each Perl module, you will see a line such as:

    main::RegisterCommand ("COMMAND NAME", new COMMAND ());
   

   This line registers "COMMAND NAME" in a global table used by autobuild.pl to locate a command specified in the XML file.

4. To run an arbitrary command for which a Perl "command module" has not been written, you can use the "shell" command. For example, to run the ls command on a Unix system:

    <command name="shell" options="ls" />
   

5. When setting up a Windows build system make sure you disable the firewall and the automatic windows updates.

1. PDF - to display a PDF file use the <pdf> build option in the configuration file for the scoreboard.pl script. For example, <pdf>test.pdf</pdf> will cause a hyperlink to appear called pdf to appear on that row in the scoreboard. Clicking on the link will download/open the file. A column header will appear called PDF. If this tag is the config file then the column will not appear in the screen. This is useful if you use doxygen to create postscript output and convert it to PDF format for greater reader usability.

   The <url> contents plus the <pdf> contents are used to refer to the document on the webserver. So if the <url> is http://deuce.doc.wustl.edu/test/machine_one_wustl_edu and the <pdf> is test.pdf, the webserver will look for the file at http://deuce.doc.wustl.edu/test/machine_one_wustl_edu/test.pdf

2. PS - to display a PS file use the <ps> build option in the configuration file for the scoreboard.pl script. For example, <ps>test.ps</ps> will cause a hyperlink to appear called 'ps' to appear on that row in the scoreboard. Clicking on the link will download/open the file. A column header will appear called PS. If this tag is the config file then the column will not appear on the screen. This is useful if you use doxygen to create postscript output.

   The <url> contents plus the <ps> contents are used to refer to the document on the webserver. So if the <url> is http://deuce.doc.wustl.edu/test/machine_one_wustl_edu and the <ps> is test.ps, the webserver will look for the file at http://deuce.doc.wustl.edu/test/machine_one_wustl_edu/test.ps

3. HTML - to display a HTML file use the <html> build option in the configuration file for the scoreboard.pl script. For example, <html>test.html</html> will cause a hyperlink to appear called html to appear on that row in the scoreboard. Clicking on the link will download/open the file. A column header will appear called HTML. If this tag is not in the config file then the column will not appear on the screen. This is useful if you use doxygen to create html output.

4. SNAPSHOT - for users of automake and autoconf, to display a created snapshot of the present code, use the <snapshot>test.tar.gz</snapshot>. This will cause a hyperlink to appear called 'snapshot' to appear on that row in the scoreboard. Clicking on the link will download/open the file. A column header will appear called SNAPSHOT. If this tag is not in the config file then the column will not appear on the screen for that row. This is useful if you want to release a snapshot of the CVS repository ready for a user to download and run "./configure".

5. The time of last build on the scoreboard is colored to show when a build is late. Non-late builds are white, late builds are orange, and very late builds are red. The defaults for orange and red are 24 and 48 hours respectively. These are based on the assumption that builds will run daily or less, perhaps continuously. The values for orange and red can be changed for individual builds with the parameters <orange>hours</orange> and <red>hours</red>.

6. A schedule file is available for less than daily builds. This file has an .ini format. Build names are specified in square brackets and parameters follow. The one the scoreboard uses is "runon" with a list of days (date abbrevs). For example, [build_xyz] runon Mon Thu thus, build_xyz will not be considered late until the current time passes the next build by the amount specified in orange and red plus the number of days between the last and next builds. This feature is activated by the presence of the -s switch.

7. There are situations where you may have a number of system that share a single data store, via NFS and/or SMB. In this case you may wish to have the machine running scoreboard.pl do some of the function normally done by autobuild.pl, specifically the maintenance of the output logs. This can be accomplished with the -c option. When this option is specified the directory specified in the required -d option is maintained by the scoreboard program. This allows, for example, the autobuild to specify only "process_logs move" and the remainder, "prettify, clean, and index" will be done by the scoreboard. It also allows the faster relative refs to be used as url or skipped entirely, if the name of the build matches the name of the sub-directory.

8. To retain the full capabilities of autobuild.pl in the situation above(7). The KEEP parameter was added to the scoreboard. The value for keep can be specified globally with the -k switch to scoreboard.pl or for individual builds with the <keep>number</keep>.

   This parameter also works with the existing (no -c) mode and applies to the number of items kept in the cache.

   The default for keep is 5.

9. To help identify builds on the scoreboard there is a "Build Sponsor" column. This consists of two parts the name of the sponsor defined by <build_sponsor> name </build_sponsor> and a url defined by <build_sponsor_url> url </build_sponsor_url> that would be displayed when the name is clicked.

10. To optimize the speed of scoreboard generation and (greatly) decrease diskspace requirements one could use the -b option. When specified the scoreboard script will not create local cache copies of build logfiles (raw and prettified) but will use build URL based links throughout unless a build configuration explicitly specifies that the local cache must be used through the definition of a <cache/> tag in the <build> section for that build.

On Windows we need to have access to several unix like tools, the easiest is to use Cygwin. The following steps describe how to obtain Cygwin and install it.

• Go to www.cygwin.com and download the setup.exe from the page and install it on the desktop

• Start setup.exe from the desktop, press next, another time next, root directory is ok by default, change local package directory to c:\cygwin\download, select how to connect to the internet, select a download site in your area. Now the package selection is shown, press the view button once, besides the default packages also select cvs, openssh, rsync and svn and then press next to install everything. Let the installer create the desktop icon.

• Start cygwin using the desktop icon and do a ssh to another server and close the cygwin shell again. Then copy the ssh keys from another system to c:\cygwin\home\<user>\.ssh.

• For perl we prefer active state perl from www.activestate.com

• Then have a look at other build files how to setup a config file.

1. check_compiler -> print out the version of the compiler being used, for example:

     <command name="check_compiler" options="gcc" />
   

   The values which can be specified in the options field are in the Run() method of autobuild/command/check_compiler.pm

2. configs -> Specify a special configuration for auto_run_tests.pl, for example:

     <variable name="configs"  value="Linux ST" />
   

   Will invoke: auto_run_tests.pl -Config Linux -Config ST

3. print_os_version -> print out some information about the operating system being used for the build

     <command name="print_os_version" />
   

   If you run on Windows with Cygwin or MingW and you have uname installed you can printed os version and uname results with

     <command name="print_os_version" options="useuname" />
   

4. print_perl_version -> print out some information about the perl version being used for the build

     <command name="print_perl_version" />
   

5. print_make_version -> print out some information about the make version being used for the build

     <command name="print_make_version" />
   

Preliminary e-mail notification support has been added. It is still a work in progress. Unix supported only for now, NT support on the way.

1. Add the following lines to the configuration file:

    <variable name="MAIL_ADMIN"  value="myname@mydomain.com" />
    <variable name="SCOREBOARD_URL"  value="http://mydomain.com/my_scoreboard_url" />
   

   When build errors are detected, an e-mail will be sent to myname@mydomain.com, showing an abbreviated list of errors, and referring the recipient to look at SCOREBOARD_URL for a full list of the errors.

   Alternatively, if you would like the build errors to be sent to a group of people, use the following line instead of MAIL_ADMIN above:

    <variable name="MAIL_ADMIN_FILE"  value="C:/foo/mail_map.txt" />
   

   The MAIL_ADMIN_FILE variables point to a file that contains the email addresses of people who should notified by email when an error occurs. Note that file should have one email address per line.

2. For Windows NT only, you also need to add the domain name of the SMTP server used to send outgoing mail. You do not need to add this line on UNIX platforms:

    <variable name="MAIL_ADMIN_SMTP_HOST"  value="smtphostame.mydomain.com" />
   

NOTE: If you'd like to change the email address of autobuild displayed to users who recieve email notification, add and modifiy the line below:

     <variable name="MAIL_SENDER_ADDRESS"  value="autobuild@mydomain.com" />