-# Installing Exim Build Farm Client
-So you want to give back to the Exim project but don't know how? Being a member of the Exim Build Farm is one way you can help. If your distro and version is not on the list that is currently being built, or if your build configuration is drastically different than others with your distro and version, then submit a request to join the farm. This Installation page is starting from the assumption that you have already submitted your request and the farm administration has sent you an email with your machine alias and secret password.
+# Installing Exim BuildFarm Client
+So you want to give back to the Exim project but don't know how? Being a member of the Exim BuildFarm is one way you can help. If your distro and version is not on the list that is currently being built, or if your build configuration is drastically different than others with your distro and version, then please consider submitting a request to join the farm. I would also like to point out that the Debian project has excellent Exim coverage on Experimental their [Build Farm](https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=exim4&suite=experimental). We're not discouraging you from joining the Exim BuildFarm if you're Debian or Debian derivative, but merely want to acknowledge the excellent job the Debian project already does with it.
+
+This Installation page works on the assumption that you have already submitted your [Exim BuildFarm Application](http://eximbuild.mrball.net/cgi-bin/register-form.pl) and the BuildFarm administration has sent you an email with your machine alias (aka _animal_) and secret password, which you will enter in step 9 below. If you just want to run the build farm client and never submit the results, you call simply run everything with the --test option and it will still work. If you ever run it without --test, it will still work, but the server will reject the feedback because it's from an unknown _animal_.
## Install Steps
1. Make sure that all required packages for Exim to build successfully are installed. The minimal package requirements are the basic suite of compiler tools and basic libraries. You will also need to install the ccache package.
2. Create the master exim user (i.e. the user that Exim changes uid to when it runs in normal operation). I suggest the user **exim**. If you already have the Exim package provided by your distro installed, chances are good that you already have a user named **exim** or **exim4**. That user is fine. This howto also assumes you use the groupname **exim**.
-3. Create a user that will run the Build Farm. I suggest the user **farm**. Due to some assumptions that are made in the test suite, the group name must also be **farm**. It is ok if you make it a secondary group or the primary group.
-4. Add **exim** as a secondary group to the **farm** user.
+3. Create a user that will run the Build Farm. I suggest the user **farm**. Due to some assumptions that are made in the test suite, the group name must also be **farm**. It is ok if you make it a secondary group or the primary group. You also must assign a geckos name, or some tests will fail. I suggest "Exim BuildFarm". An example command that should work for most distributions:
+`useradd -m -c 'Exim BuildFarm' farm`
+4. Add **exim** as a secondary group to the **farm** user. (You should **NOT** add **farm** as a secondary group to the exim user; this will cause test errors.)
5. Configure sudo to allow user **farm** to elevate to root without a password. Run `visudo` and add:
`farm ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL`
6. Change to the **farm** user.
`mkdir $HOME/buildfarm`
11. Directory permissions must be lax enough for the **exim** user running the test suite to be able to access the files that user farm has checked out. Make the **farm** user's home directory be world readable and world searchable:
`chmod o+rx $HOME`
-12. Test the build process by running `./run_build.pl --test --verbose=2`. If there are build errors, make adjustments, install additional packages, etc, and repeat the test. You can repeat this as many times as you want because test mode does not store the status of the git repo or the status of each stage of the build.
-13. The official process can be kicked off by running `/home/farm/code/run_cron.sh`. This will run the default build configuration and upload the results to the server.
-14. Once that command runs with no complaints, add it to the **farm** user crontab. You can run it at whatever frequency you choose, I suggest 1 hour. If a previous instantiation is still running, the script will detect the lockfile and exit.
-
-## Overview
-
-In the default configuration, a full rebuild of Exim will occur every 7 days, and it will also build and run the test suite. You can choose to also have it also build the docs, but there are several extra package requirements for it to build the documentation.
-
-Review your enabled features in the Makefile and make adjustments to your *build-farm.conf* to enable those features, using either the makefile_set, makefile_add, or makefile_regex. You may also receive requests from the developers to enable specific features on your build.
+12. Test the configure process by running `./run_build.pl --test --verbose=2 --only-steps=configure`. If there are errors, you'll need to correct them until the process succeeds (ends with OK). You can repeat this as many times as necessary because test mode does not store the status of the git repo or the status of each stage of the build.
+13. Test the build process by running `./run_build.pl --test --verbose=2 --only-steps=configure,make`. If there are build errors, make adjustments, install additional packages, etc, and repeat the test.
+14. Test the test suite by running `./run_build.pl --test --verbose=2 --only-steps=configure,make,test --override range_num_tests='1 2'`. If there are build errors when building the test suite, or runtime errors trying to run the test suite, you may need to install additional packages (you shouldn't though).
+15. If you enabled the documentation building process in the *build-farm.conf*, then you can try to build it with `./run_build.pl --test --verbose=2 --only-steps=configure,build_docs`. For documentation generation to succeed, it will require extra packages to be installed to support xml, xslt, pdf, and a few other things.
+16. If you can get past each of these steps, then your build farm system meets the minimum requirements.
+17. The official process can be kicked off by running `/home/farm/code/run_cron.sh --run-all`. This will run the default build configuration, keep track of the git repository status, and upload the build results to the server.
+18. Once that command runs with no complaints, add it to the **farm** user crontab. You can run it at whatever frequency you choose, I suggest 1 hour. If a previous instantiation is still running, the script will detect the lockfile and exit so as not to step on each other.
-The default build configuration will build all branches specified in a text file on the server. Most of the time this will only be HEAD, but occasionally the developers may have an interest in building some experimental code on a different branch. The above configuration will do all of it automatically for you. The *run_cron.sh* will also check the master repo at github and update itself (the Exim Build Farm Client software).
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+## Further documentation
+* Details of options in [build-farm.conf](https://github.com/mrballcb/exim-build-farm-client/wiki/BuildConfigConf)
+* Details of [potential testing commandlines](https://github.com/mrballcb/exim-build-farm-client/wiki/TestingBuilds)
git://git.exim.org / buildfarm-client-wiki.git / blobdiff