[wtp-dev] Stability of I-builds during release shutdown

[Timothy Deboer <deboer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

The 0.7 release candidate builds are
proposed for the 13th and 22nd, with the release at the end of the month.
What I haven't seen is what happens between these times - presumably we
are going to run nightly I-builds or something similar. My concern is that
with constant I-builds typically comes constant churn - every team ends
up taking a turn at breaking the build and we have brown-outs that are
nobody's fault - most of the build is good, but there are some less stable
parts which change from build to build. Our past I-builds are a good example
- although they are fairly stable on Tuesday, we typically have a series
of build and JUnit failures until sometime Thursday when everyone starts
focusing on it.

To ensure that we have frequent, high-quality
builds that can be used for testing and external teams building on top
of WTP, I propose one of the following:

1. We do less frequent I-builds (e.g.
every 3-4 days), but use warmups like we have done with previous I-builds.
For example, we could start spinning I-builds on every Monday morning and
spin every 4 hours until we get it clean, then do it again on Thursday.

2. We stay vigilant - every nightly
I-build should be as good as the previous milestone/release candidate.
Any compile errors or JUnit failures are deemed critical and must be fixed
asap by a respin.

Thought? Opinions? Other suggestions?

Thanks,
Tim deBoer
WebSphere Tools - IBM Canada Ltd.
(905) 413-3503  (tieline 969)
deboer@xxxxxxxxxx