talos.zip, talos.json and you

I have deployed today a small change that modifies how we deploy talos.zip to the performance/talos jobs.

In short what the change does is this:

• Download talos_from_source_code.py
• Which downloads http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/raw-file/default/testing/talos/talos.json
• Which contains where to download the talos.zip from (http://build.mozilla.org/talos/zips/talos.zip - accessible to build machines)

That's it. Nothing else. Nothing more.

How does this help?

• Every new talos.zip we place under build.m.o will require a commit on the tree
• Only when the change lands on the repo that talos.zip will be used
• A newer talos.zip will only be used from that changeset onwards
• Any regressions caused by the new talos.zip will be blamed to a changeset on the tree
• Such changeset can be backed out by anyone without the need of releng

What are other side-effects?

• We can run a talos.zip through the try server and use compare-talos
• We don't need a downtime anymore to land a talos.zip
• The new talos.zip cannot affect any other branches
• We can run an old changeset with the talos.zip that was used for it
• We can extend the talos.json file to control other moving parts like plugins

If we could summarize it in one sentence it would be:
"One changeset, one talos.zip"

This different model is not new as Jetpack already had it (jetpack-location.txt).
This model locks every changeset on a tree to a specific state of an external force.
In other words, we can configure parameters from inside tree.

Best regards,
Armen

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=673131

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