Release 12

Apart from some minor fixes and code tidy up. this includes the following more notable changes:

• the TextUpgradeXVersion module is brought up to date with various core code changes
• a module-neutral, animal-based save mechanism replaces the bespoke mechanism that was implemented in TestUpgradeXVersion. This will enable future development like testing openssl builds against NSS builds etc.
• a standardized way of accumulating log files is implemented. This will enable some planned server side improvements.
• requests are now signed using SHA256 nstead of SHA1.
• there is a separate config section for settings to be used with valgrind. This makes it easier to turn valgrind on or off.
• typedefs detection is improved for OSX
• there is a setting for additional docs build targets, in addition to the standard html target.
• use of the configure "accache" is made substantially more robust
• timed out processes are more verbose

Release 11

Bug fixes plus following features

• Allow list of branches as positional arguments to run_branches.pl
  This overrides what is found in the config file. The list can't include
  metabranches like ALL, nor can it contain regexes.
• improve diagnostic capture for git and fetching branches of interest
• unify config.log and configure.log
• add siginfo to gdb output
• improve test coverage
  • run check for test modules marked NO_INSTALLCHECK
  • run TAP tests for test modules that have them
  • run TAP tests for contrib modules that have them
• explicitly use "trust" with initdb

Release 10

Principal feature: support for non-standard repositories:

• support multi-element branch names, such as "dev/featurename" or "bug/ticket_number/branchname"
• provide a get_branches() method in SCM module
• support regular expression branches of interest. This is matched against the list of available branches
• prune branches when doing git fetch.

Other features/ behaviour changes:

• support for testing cross version upgrade extended back to 9.2
• support for core Postgres changes:
  • extended support for USE_MODULE_DB
  • new extra_float_digits regime
  • removal of user table oid support
  • removal of abstime and friends
  • changed log file locations
• don't search for valgrind messages unless valgrind is configured
• make detection of when NO_TEMP_INSTALL is allowed more bulletproof

There are also various minor bug fixes and code improvements.

REL_9

Along with numerous fixes of minor bugs and a couple of not so minor bugs, this release has the following features:

• new command line parameter --run-parallel for run_branches.pl runs all branches in parallel, possibly across animals as well
• new config setting max_load_avg inhibits a run if the load average is higher than the setting
• new config_option archive_reports saves that number of generations of the report sent to the server
• new command line parameter --show-error-log which outputs the error log if any on stdout
• automatically rerun 3 hours after a git failure, useful on back branches where commits can be infrequent
• automatically convert old pgbuildfarm.org URLs to buildfarm.postgresql.org
• better logic to detect when temp installs are unnecessary
• better valgrind processing
• new module to check core perl code for style and syntax
• allow upstream repos to be rebased
• add animal name and branch to verbose traces, useful in parallel runs
• remove old if $branch eq 'global' processing in config file, replace with a simple global stanza, the legacy use is still supported.

If you want to run in parallel and you are just running a single animal, changing --run-all to --run-parallel in the command line should be all you need to do. Parallel runs are not run all at once. By default they are launched every 60 seconds. You can also limit the maximum number of parallel runs. The default is 10. I will be adding some notes to the Buildfarm Howto on how to use this feature.

The max_load_avg setting only works on Unix, and requires the installation of the non-standard perl module Unix::Uptime. If this value is set to a non-zero value and the module is not present the script will die. The setting is compared to the load average in the last minute and the last 5 minutes. If either are higher then the run is cancelled.

Release 8

This release contains a number of small changes to make using the
--from-source feature a bit nicer. It also contains a good deal of code
cleanup to be perlcritic clean, with some exceptions, down to severity
level 3, and also to remove some out of date code that referred to
Postgresql branches we no longer support.

It also contains the following features:

• --tests and --schedule now apply to the check step as well as the
  installcheck step
• a new --delay-check switch delays the check step until after
  install. This helps work around a bug or lack of capacity w.r.t.
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH on Alpine Linux
• if the environment value BFLIB exists it is added to the perl search
  path. That means it is possible to install the top level scripts
  separately from the support modules.