5.108. Release Notes for Buildbot v0.8.8
The following are the release notes for Buildbot v0.8.8 Buildbot v0.8.8 was released on August 22, 2013
5.108.1. Master
5.108.1.1. Features
- The - MasterShellCommandstep now correctly handles environment variables passed as list.
- The master now poll the database for pending tasks when running buildbot in multi-master mode. 
- The algorithm to match build requests to slaves has been rewritten pull request 615. The new algorithm automatically takes locks into account, and will not schedule a build only to have it wait on a lock. The algorithm also introduces a - canStartBuildbuilder configuration option which can be used to prevent a build request being assigned to a slave.
- buildbot stopand- buildbot restartnow accept- --cleanto stop or restart the master cleanly (allowing all running builds to complete first).
- The - IRCbot now supports clean shutdown and immediate shutdown by using the command ‘shutdown’. To allow the command to function, you must provide allowShutdown=True.
- CopyDirectoryhas been added.
- BuildslaveChoiceParameterhas been added to provide a way to explicitly choose a buildslave for a given build.
- default.css now wraps preformatted text by default. 
- Slaves can now be paused through the web status. 
- The latent buildslave support is less buggy, thanks pull request 646. 
- The - treeStableTimerfor- AnyBranchSchedulernow maintains separate timers for separate branches, codebases, projects, and repositories.
- SVNhas a new option preferLastChangedRev=True to use the last changed revision for- got_revision
- The build request DB connector method - getBuildRequestscan now filter by branch and repository.
- A new - SetPropertystep has been added in- buildbot.steps.masterwhich can set a property directly without accessing the slave.
- The new - LogRenderablestep logs Python objects, which can contain renderables, to the logfile. This is helpful for debugging property values during a build.
- ‘buildbot try’ now has an additional option –property option to set properties. Unlike the existing option –properties option, this new option supports setting only a single property and therefore allows commas to be included in the property name and value. 
- The - Gitstep has a new- configoption, which accepts a dict of git configuration options to pass to the low-level git commands. See- Gitfor details.
- In - ShellCommandShellCommand now validates its arguments during config and will identify any invalid arguments before a build is started.
- The list of force schedulers in the web UI is now sorted by name. 
- OpenStack-based Latent Buildslave support was added. See pull request 666. 
- Master-side support for P4 is available, and provides a great deal more flexibility than the old slave-side step. See pull request 596. 
- Master-side support for Repo is available. The step parameters changed to camelCase. - repo_downloads, and- manifest_override_urlproperties are no longer hardcoded, but instead consult as default values via renderables. Renderable are used in favor of callables for- syncAllBranchesand- updateTarball.
- Builder configurations can now include a - description, which will appear in the web UI to help humans figure out what the builder does.
- GNUAutoconf and other pre-defined factories now work correctly (bug #2402) 
- The pubDate in RSS feeds is now rendered correctly (bug #2530) 
5.108.1.2. Deprecations, Removals, and Non-Compatible Changes
- The - split_filefunction for- SVNPollermay now return a dictionary instead of a tuple. This allows it to add extra information about a change (such as- projector- repository).
- The - workdirbuild property has been renamed to- builddir. This change accurately reflects its content; the term “workdir” means something different.- workdiris currently still supported for backwards compatibility, but will be removed eventually.
- The - Blockerstep has been removed.
- Several polling ChangeSources are now documented to take a - pollIntervalargument, instead of- pollinterval. The old name is still supported.
- StatusReceivers’ checkConfig method should no longer take an errors parameter. It should indicate errors by calling - error.
- Build steps now require that their name be a string. Previously, they would accept anything, but not behave appropriately. 
- The web status no longer displays a potentially misleading message, indicating whether the build can be rebuilt exactly. 
- The - SetPropertystep in- buildbot.steps.shellhas been renamed to- SetPropertyFromCommand.
- The EC2 and libvirt latent slaves have been moved to - buildbot.buildslave.ec2and- buildbot.buildslave.libirtrespectively.
- Pre v0.8.7 versions of buildbot supported passing keyword arguments to - buildbot.process.BuildFactory.addStep, but this was dropped. Support was added again, while still being deprecated, to ease transition.
5.108.1.3. Changes for Developers
- Added an optional build start callback to - buildbot.status.status_gerrit.GerritStatusPushThis release includes the fix for bug #2536.
- An optional - startCBcallback to- GerritStatusPushcan be used to send a message back to the committer. See the linked documentation for details.
- bb:sched:ChoiceStringParameter has a new method - getChoicesthat can be used to generate content dynamically for Force scheduler forms.
5.108.2. Slave
5.108.2.1. Features
- The fix for Twisted bug #5079 is now applied on the slave side, too. This fixes a perspective broker memory leak in older versions of Twisted. This fix was added on the master in Buildbot-0.8.4 (see bug #1958). 
- The - --nodaemonoption to- buildslave startnow correctly prevents the slave from forking before running.
5.108.2.2. Deprecations, Removals, and Non-Compatible Changes
5.108.3. Details
For a more detailed description of the changes made in this version, see the git log itself:
git log v0.8.7..v0.8.8