This leaves me wondering, as I mention on the HDL list, if we can do the same
thing with large sections of the POWER Spec.
-# Build Servers
-
-TODO
+# Build Servers, Process Automation, and Reducing Cognitive Load
+
+Over the past month, Jacob, and a new project member Cole, set up a new build
+server for the project. The build server is an old computer that Jacob wasn't
+using anymore, that he decided to make available to the project for running
+continuous integration (CI) testing for the many modules and submodules of
+the project. The build server is a gitlab test runner instance using a Docker
+backend. As Luke has taken pains to make clear many times, very large and
+complex python projects are guaranteed to fail without proper, extensive test
+coverage. This new build server will allow us to automate the running,
+monitoring, and reporting of these tests, giving us the ability to push a
+commit and have it automatically "verified" as cohesive with the existing
+codebase. Automating feedback, will help provide more confidence
+to the engineers that their code isn't breaking some other functionality in
+a codebase they are working on, and should also help improve the ease of
+long-term maintainability of the code. The more we can automate the menial
+tasks that have to be repeated frequently, and are important for success of
+the project but are not related to progressing the engineering of the Libre-SOC,
+the more productive project members can be.
+
+While we are in the early stages of the CI testing integration into our project
+workflows, eventually Jacob should be able to simply push a commit on his Kazan
+SPIR-V to LLVM-IR compiler, and continue working, automatically recieving
+feedback on how well his new code integrates with his existing code. As a
+result he can be more confident in his code-quality and also work a bit faster
+because he no longer needs to take time out of his workflow to run the tests.
+More significant than this however, is that the automation of continuous
+integration testing significantly diminishes the probability that the project
+will get out of sync, or become cluttered with erroneous test failures,
+obscuring the clarity with which a project developer can view the codebase.
+Automating this kind of more "administrative" work, reduces the overall
+cognitive load on the project developers allowing them to allocate
+proportionally more attention to the primary engineering aspects of the project.
+
+To help continue to ease such administrative burdens on the engineers, Cole is
+working on a repository of setup automation scripts. The first script is one
+that will replicate the setup of Jacob's build server, so that others who want
+to contribute computational resources to the project may do so easily. Cole is
+also working on a collection of modular scripts to automate the setup of the
+development environment for the HDL workflow and the layout of the SOC,
+including the installation of development branches of a substainal number of
+very complex pieces of software. This should help ease the process of
+onboarding new members to the project, especially some interns that we have
+coming onboard in the next few months to do the layout of the chip. These
+scripts will be available via the git.libre-riscv.org repository dev-env-setup,
+at the following link **TODO ADD LINK TO REPO**.
# Conclusion
projects / crowdsupply.git / blobdiff