Speaker
Report on the experience (or the proposed activity). It would be very important to mention key services which are essential for the success of your activity on the EGEE infrastructure.
We already had experienced having to setup the local build system
in the INFN
INFN National Centre for Telematics and Computer Science (CNAF)
in order to support
developers involved Grid projects, such as DataGrid, EGEE I and
EGEE II. Goldrake
officially started in 2005 when the build system used in DataGrid
project was
integrated with a Web Application. In 2006 it was extended with
simple monitor
checking. During these years our experience with Goldrake has
been focused on
evaluating and improving Goldrake's applicability to various
system, and testbeds, as
well as Goldrake's functionality in automating the software
development process. The
system is used by the Release Managers and Testers of the Italian
(IT) team that is a
group of developers collaborating in the middleware JRA1 of EGEE
II project. The IT
team has the responsibility of some components that belong to the
subsystem
controlled by different teams and fully manages other subsystems.
Describe the scientific/technical community and the scientific/technical activity using (planning to use) the EGEE infrastructure. A high-level description is needed (neither a detailed specialist report nor a list of references).
Software deployment are difficult processes when people are
located in different
sites and involved in developing several software components
subject to frequent
changes and improvements. Therefore, it is extremely important to
setup a local daily
build system in order to allow each site Release Menager to
handle the whole project
and to better collaborate with the central Release Manager. In
addition, by setting
up this system, Testers are able to verify the latest
functionalities.
Describe the added value of the Grid for the scientific/technical activity you (plan to) do on the Grid. This should include the scale of the activity and of the potential user community and the relevance for other scientific or business applications
The local build system we have planned, called Goldrake, is an
automatic build system
able to store in a database information related to bugs, patches
and tags in order to
trace the whole history of a candidate release in order to
monitor the whole life of
a project. The clear advantage here is given by the introducing
of a database
organized to collect information about a specific software
project, improving the
cross-activities within the co-workers taken part in the project,
and providing
useful information in case of build and test problems.
Goldrake is an automatic and on demand web-based
configuration-driven remote build
system, able to interact with different type of build system,
such as gLite, and to
support several build mechanisms such as ant and autotool. It
allows the site
Release Managers to be in harness with Developers and Testers,
but in particular to
be reactive respect to the central Release Menager, whose
activity represents the
success of the software deployment.
With a forward look to future evolution, discuss the issues you have encountered (or that you expect) in using the EGEE infrastructure. Wherever possible, point out the experience limitations (both in terms of existing services or missing functionality)
As stressed by the previous points, the setting up of a local
build system is
extremely important for the success of the Grid software
deployment. Goldrake is
currently a backup of the gLite sytem. In order to continuously
allow this goal we
plan to extend the current Goldrake to support the ETICS system,
being the new
official build, configuration, integration and testing system
used by EGEE II project.
