Documentation/Labs/CI-and-NightlyPackagesGeneration

Overview

As of April 26th 2016, the build machines known as the Slicer factories have two roles:

• Continuous integration for Slicer
• Nightly packages generation and testing for Slicer application and associated extensions

There are currently two factories (factory.kitware and factory-south.kitware) in charge of both Nightly testing and Nightly generation of packages.

Current scripts to build extensions:

• template: https://github.com/Slicer/Slicer/blob/master/Extensions/CMake/SlicerExtensionsDashboardScript.TEMPLATE.cmake

• windows: https://github.com/Slicer/DashboardScripts/blob/master/factory-south-win7-vs2013-64bits_slicerextensions_release_continuous.cmake

Limitations of the current infrastructure

• Some extensions are consistently not built
• No access to the factory internals
• No well described procedure on how factory machine with packaging can be set up
• Andriy: Not possible to choose the factory in the extension manager.
  • Jc: It is already possible to set the extension server in the settings
• Jorge: Community want to help, but nobody know how to
  • Jc: Having more build bots doing Nightly test would be great. See Documentation/Nightly/Developers/Tutorials/DashboardSetup for more details.

Possible improvements

• Temporary: Is there a way to run a manual build process ?

• Sharing the workload for maintaining and troubleshooting the factory process

• Cloud based solutions (e.g. AWS)
  • Costs ?
  • Preliminary tests ?

AWS cost

Instance types: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/ Instances prices: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-options/dedicated-instances/

G2.2xlarge (linux): $3825 / yr G2.2xlarge (windows): $4934 / yr

Data Transfer

• Internet -> EC2: $0
• EC2 -> Internet: $55 / yr / instance

Details: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tTndErxk_71ZjbT85Kwo5hkd9Yf10qm7ToaM087vKg4/edit?usp=sharing