Forrest-bot and Gump engine

["Adam R. B. Jack" <aj...@trysybase.com>]

All,

As I read this:

    http://forrestbot.cocoondev.org/index.jsp

"This site contains automatically updated and built versions of websites
built with the latest Forrest. It aims to provide a service similar to Gump,
but for websites. Host projects' XML is automatically checked out and the
HTML rebuilt every 4 hours. "

I wondered if there is a way to collaborate. Gump is objectified in Python
now, and has a core engine that might be re-usable for Forrest-bot. Gump
checks code out of SCMs (CVS/SVN, for now) and orchestrates scripts or ant
runs, traps errors/timeouts, etc. This seems what forrest-bot needs to do
also, and I'd hate to under-utilise our investment when we could help you
avoid duplication.

A few thoughts occur:

1) Folks could update their site as part of their Gump build, but that seems
to be overloading the Gump process w/ clutter not meant there. That said,
there is nothing to stop us having a workspace/profile simple for this.

2) Nothing stops us from writing a simple ForrestBot flavour of Gump that
uses the standard workspace, but only "works on" projects with XML
attributes for forrest documentation. If would do it's normal checkout from
SCM, check if anything changed, build classpaths (if needed), launch
ant/script to do work. [I think the 'new' forrest-bot is Ant 1.6 based w/
includes, so maybe something could be done here.]

3) We could Gump the forrest base (build from scratch) and then the
documentation, so it is always the latest from CVS of all things.

There are lots of ways we could collaborate on this & save effort.

BTW: There are thoughts of writing a Gump web app  (Python) that could be
used to be interactive (please do X for me now). This isn't written yet, but
a Python webapp interface into these objects has to be a snap. If you don't
have something (and are building from scratch), maybe we could collaborate
there also.

That all said, I know that you guys (mainly Dave Brondsema, I hear) have
been working on a new form of Forrest-bot, and if this proposal is too
little, too late, oh well. Let me know your thoughts, and if you have any
interest exploring this.

Here is a pointer to the Python Gump:

http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/jakarta-gump/python/gump

The Gump website will be updated to reflect Python Gump (once forrestbot
puts it there. :-)

http://jakarta.apache.org/gump

regards,

Adam
--
Experience Sybase Technology...
http://www.try.sybase.com

Re: Forrest-bot and Gump engine

[Dave Brondsema <da...@brondsema.net>]

Quoting "Adam R. B. Jack" <aj...@trysybase.com>:

> 
> I wondered if there is a way to collaborate. Gump is objectified in Python
> now, and has a core engine that might be re-usable for Forrest-bot. Gump
> checks code out of SCMs (CVS/SVN, for now) and orchestrates scripts or ant
> runs, traps errors/timeouts, etc. This seems what forrest-bot needs to do
> also, and I'd hate to under-utilise our investment when we could help you
> avoid duplication.
> 1) Folks could update their site as part of their Gump build, but that seems
> to be overloading the Gump process w/ clutter not meant there. That said,
> there is nothing to stop us having a workspace/profile simple for this.
> 
> 2) Nothing stops us from writing a simple ForrestBot flavour of Gump that
> uses the standard workspace, but only "works on" projects with XML
> attributes for forrest documentation. If would do it's normal checkout from
> SCM, check if anything changed, build classpaths (if needed), launch
> ant/script to do work. [I think the 'new' forrest-bot is Ant 1.6 based w/
> includes, so maybe something could be done here.]
> 
> 3) We could Gump the forrest base (build from scratch) and then the
> documentation, so it is always the latest from CVS of all things.

The new forrestbot is really just a handful of ant buildfiles that are used in
conjunction with the main forrest ant buildfile.  Ant tasks seem to suffice for
what forrestbot will do; and it works nicely with our existing forrest ant
buildfile.

I think to truly take advantage of Gump, we would have to convert our main ant
buildfile to a python script instead.  I don't think we want to do that. 
However, it might be nice to have hooks in gump to trigger a forrest build.

> BTW: There are thoughts of writing a Gump web app  (Python) that could be
> used to be interactive (please do X for me now). This isn't written yet, but
> a Python webapp interface into these objects has to be a snap. If you don't
> have something (and are building from scratch), maybe we could collaborate
> there also.

Here I can see more potential for collaboration; especially since it would not
require finding commonalities between to existing projects.  We have a webapp
(JSPs) for the original forrestbot.  I have updated and enhanced it for the new
forrestbot but still need to do some work on it.  A webapp for gump or forrest
would execute a certain command and let the user view the progress of the
results.  The only differences I see now is that the command and output files
would be different.

> The Gump website will be updated to reflect Python Gump (once forrestbot
> puts it there. :-)
> 

So I can see Python Gump documentation by running forrest against the python
project, right?  When I have time I will set up python gump to get a better
understanding of how it works so we can work together best.

At the company I work for, we have a gump-like integration build tool; and will
use forrestbot to build these projects' documentation.  We haven't linked these
two together yet, but as we do so, I will probably get ideas for doing so with
gump and forrest.

-- 
Dave Brondsema 
dave@brondsema.net 
http://www.brondsema.net - personal 
http://www.splike.com - programming 
http://csx.calvin.edu - student org