WinCE builds disabled on release engineering

We have turned off the WinCE builds in our release automation. This will give us back some of our CPU time for others builds.
Disabling these jobs is just as switching off the lights of a room, and therefore, it can be easily reversed.

I announce this on dev.planning and here is the link to the bug.

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This work by Zambrano Gasparnian, Armen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Setting up Snow Leopard for a Mozilla Release Engineer

This is more of my personal setup from scratch that can help others to setup in a faster manner or for my next reinstall.

This post can be divided into:

• Basic development tools
• Buildbot setup
• Personal touch

WARNING: I could have missed some steps or written them incorrectly. Use at your own risk

Basic development tools

After reading Mac_OS_X_Build_Prerequisites I took these these steps out of it:

• install XCode from the Mac Installation DVD (it can also be downloaded)
• install MacPorts - download page
• sudo port install libidl autoconf213 (it took 30 mins)
• sudo port install mercurial
• sudo port install wget
• sudo port install git-core +svn
• sudo ln -s /opt/local/bin/autoconf213 /usr/local/bin/autoconf-2.13 (this is Rel. Eng. specific)

Buildbot setup

NOTE: At first I had some problems with python 2.6 which comes by default. If by any chance you need to switch to python 2.5 I recommend you to use the following command rather than trying to build it yourself (python 2.5 doesn't easily build on snow leopard and it is not planned to port the fix)

defaults write com.apple.versioner.python Version 2.5
(this will select the already installed python 2.5 version on Snow Leopard)

From buildbot, python, twistd and zope for Mac OS X page and my own experience:

• skip installing Python
• do not use a --prefix or you will have to fiddle with custom installation locations for Easy Install

wget http://www.zope.org/Products/ZopeInterface/3.3.0/zope.interface-3.3.0.tar.gz tar xfvj zope.interface-3.3.0.tar.gz cd zope.interface-3.3.0sudo python setup.py install
cd ..
wget http://tmrc.mit.edu/mirror/twisted/Twisted/8.2/Twisted-8.2.0.tar.bz2
tar xfvj Twisted-8.2.0.tar.bz2
cd Twisted-8.2.0sudo python setup.py install
cd ..

hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/build/buildbot
cd buildbotsudo python setup.py install

• create your buildbot master and slave where you want them

buildbot create-master master
buildbot create-slave slave localhost:9010 moz2-darwin-slave03 password
cd master
ln -s ~/repos/buildbotcustom
ln -s ~/repos/buildbot-configs/mozilla2-staging/*.{py,ini,cfg} .
ln -s ~/repos/buildbot-configs/mozilla2-staging/l10n-changesets* .
ln -s master1.cfg master.cfg
ln -s release_config1.py release_config.py
ln -s release-fennec-mozilla-1.9.2.py release_mobile_config.py

• comment out on master.cfg the information with regards to the buildbot DB (sqlalchemy)
• create a file called BuildSlaves.py and enter this content:

SlavePasswords = {
    'linux': 'password',
    'linux64': 'password',
    'win32': 'password',
    'macosx': 'password',
}

Personal touch

• You can find in here some of my configuration files like .hgrc, .vimrc and .profile
• Get Chicken of the VNC (This client works fine for connecting to our Windows slaves)
• Get VMWare Fusion 2 (VMware-Fusion-2.0.6-196839) (this is the version I have license for)
• Get Centos reference image (if you use KVM) (last update on May 2009)
• Get Komodo Edit 5.2
• Get Viscosity VPN
• Get TaskMate
• Get iTerm 
• Get Git

At this point I am missing instructions for the following (it might come in following posts):

• install a better version of Vim or find setting to change (numeric keypad behaves oddly)
• setup my Microsoft Keyboard and Mouse (look for the CD or place to download it)
• install csshX (it allows me connect to multiple machines at the same time)
• how to setup the Centos VM to work with your local buildbot master
• how to setup a Windows VM to work with your local buildbot master

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This work by Zambrano Gasparnian, Armen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

What I have worked on since I started as a full-timer

We are doing a process of self-evaluation at work which make us look into the past and see which projects we have liked working on.
In this blog post I list the projects that I have worked on and I go into further detail in each section. On the first section you will see the overall picture, on the second one I have listed some blog posts related to the projects in chronological reverse order and in the last section there is a link to ALL the bugs that I fixed since April.

The big picture of what I have worked on in this last year is:

• L10n nightly updates for Firefox (finished in Q3)
  
• I fixed nightly builds and repackages-on-change as a contractor (Fall 08 and Winter 09)
  
• Multi-locale build for Fennec (Q4)
  
• WinCE localized build for Firefox (Q4-Q1)
  
• Machine setup and failures diagnosis (all the time)
• Central deployment of packages (puppet and OPSI - Q4)
  
• Some evangelization (Talks at Seneca and interviews - Q4)
  

This is the list of projects that I have worked on in a sequential order:

• Localized Windows CE builds for Firefox (Jan 2010)
• Upload Fennec single-locale binaries in a sub-directory (Nov 2009)
• Install required libraries on scratchbox through puppet (Nov 2009)
• Blogging blitz - L10n infrastructure (Nov 2009)
• Individual locales for Fennec (Nov 2009)
• Multi-locale builds for Fennec (Nov 2009)
  
• Talk at Seneca about volunteer involvement (Oct 2009)
• Install required library on Scratchbox (Oct 2009)
• Initial involvement with mobile side of release engineering (Oct 2009)
• Fix queuing of partial updates generation after enabling L10n updates (Aug 2009)
• Deployment of L10n nightly updates (Aug 2009)
• Generating MAR files (May 2009)
• Generate partial & complete mars for nightly l10n builds on m-c (Feb 2009)

If you want to look at the bugs that I have fixed since April you can have a look at this query:

• Query of fixed from 2009-04-01 to 2010-01-01
  

Cheers,
Armen

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This work by Zambrano Gasparnian, Armen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Making sense of buying a house in Toronto

I am trying to get a place for myself and I have found this article that talks about closing costs when buying in Toronto and mentions the following items:

• Survey. ~$650 seller
  
• Title Insurance. $250-$275 seller?
  
• Land Transfer Tax. Depends on price of house and if you are a new house buyer. Explanation.
  
• Legal Fees. $600-$800. buyer or seller?
  
• Disbursements. $400-$600
  
• Statement of Adjustments. Varies.
  
• Home Insurance. A house purchase has this cost as a closing cost; a condo doesn't have it.
  
• Mortgage Application. A mortgage broker gets paid by the lender so take advantage of it.
  
• Mortgage Appraisal. ~$200. It can be waived.
  
• Home Inspection. $200-$450
  
• Status Certificate. ~100 for condo purchases and taken care of by the seller
  
• CMHC Insurance Premium. You don't pay it if you put 20% or more for down-payment. If you have to pay this premium it will be determined on how much you put as down-payment and it can be included in your mortgage. The PST on it is due the date of closing.
  

I have another post on the bake for the effects of the HST that will apply starting on July 1st.

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This work by Zambrano Gasparnian, Armen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

2 years ago: The beginning of my releng path

Two years ago I started working on my first Release Engineering project, as a student, which was to integrate unit tests into the try server.
I really didn't know what was I getting into but it lead me, without my knowledge, to an internship with Mozilla's Release Engineering team. I have to thanks for Shaver on going nuts and say that this would be a suitable project for a student and Dave for being there to support me. I still don't know if he really thought I could have made it happen or if he just wanted to see me if I would not drown. I never completed the project (setting the machines with our college's IT to pass the unit tests was not easy) and it took some time to Mozilla to get this project introduced into its production systems.

I don't know if I have mentioned before but it has been two years of immense growth as a developer and being able to work with great people that have taught me tons and supported through this journey.

If you are a student taking the open source course know that even after some time in the industry I still get projects where I simply don't know how to tackle them.

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This work by Zambrano Gasparnian, Armen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Localized Windows CE builds for Firefox are being produced

On Wednesday we had our first successful batch of nightly repackages for WinCE in the mozilla-central branch.
If you have a Windows CE device and you feel like giving it a try you can find the builds in:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla-central-l10n
Look for "wince-arm" in the filename.
We will have builds for the 1.9.2 branch shortly as soon as a couple of patches land.

You will find out that we generate a cab file, a zip file and the complete MAR file (which means that we should get updates as well assuming that all goes well).

I don't have a device myself to test that it is actually working so I will be happy to hear from you if you find a problem.

If it all goes well we will have release builds as well for when Firefox 3.6 comes out of the door.

NOTE: I can't say which locales will go out the door and it is not my call.
NOTE2: For more information you can go to the bug where everything is happening by following this link.

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This work by Zambrano Gasparnian, Armen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Personal projects going ahead

I have been quite stressed in the last few weeks with a project that appeared out of nowhere; it has been more complicated than I thought but I finally managed to put it under control in the last week or so (Thanks that dolske found what was missing).

Regardless of this stressful time of the year, I have managed to get some projects going that had been stale for a really long time. I will be brief with all of them:

• Study my bible. More than a project it is a life commitment that I had not put that much energy in the last two months until I finish my last course for my degree (I will soon have my degree yay!). I have been studying the book of Matthew and have been paying attention closely to when Jesus was referenced as the Son of Man versus the Son of God. It gets really interesting!
• Firefox in Armenian. Some of my friends tease me about it but the reason why I got involved with Mozilla was that I wanted my grandpa to use Firefox in his native language. It should become a reality in this year. You can visit the bitbucket project by visiting this link.
• Omid Media International. This is one of the Christian Ministries that I am involved with. We ported the site to Joomla and passed the old content into it. I have been learning a lot but I have very little knowledge on how to use it properly. You can visit the site by visiting this link.
• Personal site. My personal site now looks a little better but there is need for more hours on it. It talks about the things I am involved with and who I am and believe in. Link to the site.
• Analytics. I added Google analytics to few of my site and I got started on trying to make sense of it. Great tool to understand visitors behaviour.
• Theology and philosophy blog. As I said before I am putting more effort into studying the Bible and I would like to share my thoughts and force myself to write very often. I would find very boring if I forced myself to blog about me but with God is simply new revelations every time I get the Bible. Don't visit it yet since I have not yet ramped up.

I have been quite for a while due to stress but there has been some really cool things happening with work as well as with my life which I will share soon.

Cheers and happy new year!
Armen

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This work by Zambrano Gasparnian, Armen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.