[Oorexx-devel] Build Machine Good News

[David A. <w.d...@gm...>]

All -

I have good news concerning the Build Machine. In order to get the full
significance of this a little history is necessary.

Each platform VM requires a significant amount of overhead for set up
and shut down. Because it is very hard to know how long an VM will take
to be ready for an ssh command to be sent to it in order to perform a
build, I sleep in my script for 4 minutes to make sure that the VM is
really ready and that the ssh daemon on the VM is fully initialized
(including the network). A similar sleep (about 2.5 minutes) is
performed when I shut down the VM to make sure that all the resources
have been returned to the host so I do not run short of memory when I
start the next VM.

As you can see it sometimes takes longer to start and stop a VM than to
actually perform the build for the ooRexx install files. Currently a
build run for all platforms takes 5.5 hours and a lot of that time is
just spent waiting for things to get started or stopped.

But I have now found a way to completely eliminate the start up and shut
down phases for each platform VM. I now save the state of the VM to a
file at the end of a build (takes about 5 seconds) and then I restore
that state (takes about 7 seconds) before the next build. When you
restore the state the VM is immediately available and when you save the
state the VM is shut off.

I estimate this change will reduce the total build times by 50%, maybe
more. What this means is that I will be able to take on more platforms
for building ooRexx without significant impact to the time to perform
the daily builds.

If any of you have suggestions for additional platforms for daily ooRexx
builds please let me know.

David Ashley