Changing dated dirs on ftp.mozilla.org to use a new, longer BuildID

Posted 8 months, 4 weeks ago at 16:58. 4 comments

I recently inherited bug 449607 from joduinn. He’s already done most of the legwork here driving the issue to consensus, but he simply hasn’t had the time to push it to completion in the midst of managing our more rapid release cycle.

Rather than re-opening the issue for fresh debate, I’m hoping I can simply restate our intentions, and also get the attention of anyone relying on the current directory format who hasn’t chimed in yet.

John identified two issues mixed up in this bug:

1. Improve regression hunting, starting with a tool to get BuildID+changesets of nightlies from the buildbot database. This tools should also construct URL to feed to hg pushlog. Laura recently picked up this work, and it is happening in over in bug 487036.
2. Normalize our directory naming on ftp so that each build is in a unique and consistent location. Specifically, we will be changing the dated directory that each build ends up in from “YYYY-MM-DD-HH” to “YYYY-MM-DD-HH-mm-ss.” This information is already available via the build ID, and allows us to sort builds chronologically AND handle respins within the same hour easily.

If you’re interested in further details about why we’re choosing to do this and not, say, using changesets for directories, I encourage you to read both the bug and the associated Google groups discussion before commenting.

If you’re a developer who currently relies on the “YYYY-MM-DD-HH” directory format, please comment in the bug like the War on Orange people did so I can give you adequate warning to fix your scripts. Ideally, I would like to target next week (June 6th-10th) for landing this change.

Current Tunes: Above and Beyond - Trance Around The World 374 - 2011-05-27 | Filed under Build/Release, Mozilla |