[ocaml-platform] OCamlot

[Amir Chaudhry]

On 13 Feb 2013, at 20:10, Mike Lin <mlin at mlin.net> wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 9:17 AM, Amir Chaudhry <amc79 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> ## Testing and benchmarking ##
> 
> A continuous integration framework, based on OPAM, will form part of the Platform infrastructure.  We're calling this infrastructure "OCamlot". OPAM packages can be automatically tested upon submission and reports sent back to maintainers.  OCamlot will execute basic unit tests and also, in later versions, integrate benchmarking.  The build infrastructure is intended to run tests on the full range of community packages in OPAM by using secure virtualization under Citrix XenServer.  If you submit a package, you will be rewarded with regular regression tests across many diverse operating systems and platforms.
> 
> This in itself sounds like quite a big project! I was wondering, how far along is it, and what other basic tools are being used? (e.g. I think Anil has tangentially mentioned there's a Jenkins instance for OPAM)
> 
> Was thorough consideration given to building upon/contributing to existing hosted services like Travis CI or BuildHive? I've had quite good experiences with these lately, and the default build time limits can be negotiated, especially if you chip in a couple worker nodes or a bit of cash.


I'm aware of Travis CI but not looked into BuildHive.  In either case, we're limited to what's offered by those services.  That's Ubuntu Linux 12.04 VMs for Travis and Fedora 17 for BuildHive.  We probably want more targets than this as well as more control, especially in the case of trying to do benchmarking.

Travis CI: http://about.travis-ci.org/docs/user/ci-environment/
BuildHive: https://developer.cloudbees.com/bin/view/DEV/Jenkins+Build%20Machine%20Specifications

Best wishes,
Amir