Anytime builder VMs for devs (was: test infrastructure ideas appreciated ...)

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 03, 2015 at 02:33:23PM +0100, Michael Meeks wrote:
> 	Constructive thoughts appreciated in reply here.

Budget for 2-5 of our Hackfest VMs[1] to always be on standby for someone
wanting to do a fast build, and provision for Cloph to be able to hand out
log-ins at a quick ping on IRC.

Rationale:
- Cloud instances are already faster than even the fastest, most expensive and
  newest notebook and unlike the latter they do not run out of battery if you
  start compiling or do a 'make check' e.g. on an airport.
- with cloud instances getting cheaper and notebook performance has been
  stagnating in recent years, this trend will be accelerating
- building on a fast remote machine will encourage the test-oriented mindset
  that we aim for

To extend on the last point: Yes, logging into a remote machine via VNC/X11 is
somewhat cumbersome. However, that is exactly encouraging breaking bad old
habits (ad-hoc manual testing with UI-interaction) in favour of good practices:
verifying your code and changes to work with tests that do not need manual
interaction on a UI. These tests ultimately will also allow to test the
code/changes with CI on all platforms.

So in short: Remote builders instances for devs encourage good practices, are
faster than what is possible locally right now and are -- if we set this up
right -- significantly more flexible and faster to get to a developer in need.

Best,

Bjoern
  
[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Hackfests/VMs