= Introduction =

OpenVPN project uses [http://buildbot.net/trac Buildbot] to help increase code quality and provide snapshot packages. Buildbot is a Python application that can work in either ''master'' or ''slave'' mode. The ''buildmaster'' is the core server which accepts connections from ''buildslaves'' and tells them what they should do. Typically the clients fetch latest sources and report any build problems to buildbot which in turn informs developers via email. In software engineering this is called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration Continous integration] and helps prevent build problems go unnoticed for extended time periods. The clients (buildslaves) can and should run on a variety of hardware / OS platforms. For example, a buildbot setup might look like this:

 * 1 buildmaster running whatever OS
 * 1 buildslave running Debian Lenny (i386)
 * 1 buildslave running Debian Lenny (amd64)
 * 1 buildslave running Ubuntu 10.04 (i386)
 * 1 buildslave running Ubuntu 10.04 (amd64)
 * 1 buildslave running Fedora13 (i386)
 * 1 buildslave running Fedora13 (amd64)
 * 1 buildslave running CentOS 5.5 (i386)
 * 1 buildslave running CentOS 5.5 (amd64)
 * 1 buildslave running OpenBSD 4.7 (i386)
 * 1 buildslave running NetBSD (sparc64)

This setup allows automatic notifications of build failures on ''any'' of those platforms. As buildbot is a general-purpose (build) automation tool, it can also be used to automatically build packages for each buildslave architecture and then push them to a central repository for users to download. It's also trivial to integrate code checking tools into the build process.

As can be seen from the above list, the number of buildslaves can easily get out of hand, so the project can make use of ''your'' help - see below for details.

Buildbot is described in more detail in the [http://buildbot.net/buildbot/docs/0.7.12/ Buildbot manual].