[Bioc-devel] Bioc-devel Digest, Vol 20, Issue 5

[Seth Falcon]

On 10 Nov 2005, smyth at wehi.edu.au wrote:
> Hi Seth and welcome to Herve,
>
> Thanks for your work.
>
> The new formats look good and I do like the more detailed rmd check
> output information. As far as I can tell the differences between
> formats A and B are cosmetic only, results on one line for each
> package for A vs results in a two-way table for B, so I don't have a
> preference between these. I guess I like the compactness of format
> A.
>
> I think you do need to give the check time/date for each machine,
> unless you can guarantee that the checks on all machines will be
> precisely simultaneous. This has not been true in the past. This is
> the same point that Robert was making when he queried just one svn
> value.

In the current setup, all build systems run against the
same svn rev.  The intention is to address the issue of hard to
interpret and out of sync build reports by forcing all builds to use
the same inputs --- this is not time dependent.

If this proves not to be feasible, we will make sure it is clear what
is being tested for each platform.  Avoiding such confusion was a
primary motivation for the improvements.

> In my role as probably the eldest English speaker on this list, I
> have a couple of pedantic language suggestions. Firstly, these are
> not actually "Cross platform" checks. "Cross platform" would imply
> that there is somehow a comparison or transference of results
> between the platforms, whereas the checking is simply undertaken for
> each platform individually. You could say "Multiple platform
> build/check reports".

Or perhaps simply "Platform build/check reports".

> Secondly, on the linking pages it would be better to drop "Daily"
> from "Daily Check Results" unless the checks really are going to be
> run every day. Historically they've been run more like once or twice
> a week.

Well, OK.  Certainly our track record here is not stellar, but the
intention really is to have the reports run *every* day.  Perhaps we
should drop "daily" until we have demonstrated such reliability.

Thanks for the feedback.

+ seth