• LearningVesta

This page has a list of resources which you can learn to use about Vesta. If you're new to Vesta this is a good place to start, but even experienced users may find this a useful collection of references

General

• For an overview of Vesta, see:

  • "The Vesta Approach to Software Configuration Management"

  • The slides from CodeCon 2004 are another introduction to Vesta

• As you read through the various documentation, you'll find some words and phrases that have a particular meaning in Vesta. When you find yourself asking "just what is a reservation stub?", refer to the "Terminology" section of the vesta-intro(1) man page.

• The VestaFAQ has questions and answers on many topics

Users

• Overview

  • Section 4 (pages 8-18) of "The Vesta Approach to Software Configuration Management" is titled "A User's View of Vesta"

  • Experience the basic user's work flow by going through the tutorial

  • CoreAspects is a description of some of the import things users should know about Vesta

• Get familiar with more of the commands

  • The repos-ui(1) man page lists the core repository tools; the HTML version has links to the man page for each

  • The command summary is another overview of commonly-used commands

• Learn about the attributes which can be found throughout the repository

  • Some attributes control permissions (such as the owner of a directory), some record information (such as who checked in a version and when they did so), and many are used by the repository tools to do their work

  • Use vattrib to examine and modify attributes

  • See VestaAttributes/Index for a list of the different attributes and what each of them mean

  • See also VestaAttributes

• The Vesta tools use a common configuration file

  • You can use vgetconfig to get values out of the config file

  • You can override the default settings by either setting the VESTACONFIG environment variable or creating $HOME/vesta.cfg

  • The man page of each Vesta tool describes the configuration settings it uses

  • ConfigVars is a partial index of Vesta's configuration settings

• If you work with more than one repository, learn of to use the replicator

  • The replicator has a powerful object matching syntax which allows you to request things like "the last 3 versions of this package"

  • You can also use the vglob command to expand replicator patterns, which allows you to use the same matching syntax for other purposes

• Learn about the language used to describe builds (which is what's in all those files ending in .ves)

  • The SDL walkthrough will explain the basics of the language

  • There's also a set of slides introducing SDL (available in either HTML or PDF) that covers about the same material as the walkthrough. These come with a collection of example models which you can find in /vesta/vestasys.org/examples/sdl_intro.

  • You can see some simple examples of models for building C and C++ programs in /vesta/vestasys.org/examples/hello_c and /vesta/vestasys.org/examples/hello_cxx

  • The lex bridge dissection goes through the details of how to run a simple tool

  • There's also a set of slides which introduces bridge writing (available in either HTML or PDF) by developing a bridge for grep. The examples used in the slides can be found in /vesta/vestasys.org/examples/bridge_intro.

  • Before writing any complicated SDL, you should read "Controlling Cache Behavior"

  • You can find more examples of varying complexity in /vesta/vestasys.org/bridges

  • All the different bridges are tied together by the SDL code in the standard build environment (aka "std_env")

  • See SdlHacks for some intersting/useful snippets of SDL code

• If you're used to other popular systems:

  • CVS: See VestaForCvsUsers and VestaConceptsForCvsUsers

  • make: See VestaForMakeUsers

• Customize your favorite editor for Vesta:

  • Emacs: /vesta/vestasys.org/vesta/extras/emacs_support

  • vim: /vesta/vestasys.org/vesta/extras/vim_support

Administrators

• One of the best ways to get a crash course in Vesta administration is to set up a new installation

  • The classic "by hand" instructions require that you do a lot of work, but they will also force you to understand more about how the system works.

  • The install-able RedHat/Debian packages make it a lot easier to set up a new Vesta installation, but you'll also learn less using them

• BestPractices provides some guidance on hardware choices and advice for administrators

• Understand the various access controls in the repository and how to use them

  • The repository man page has an entire section on access controls

    • The export file controls which hosts and users can access the repository server

    • The group and alias files allow you to provide information to the repository about non-local users

  • There are some utilities for access controls

    • vid will get information from the repository about a user: what laises they havem what groups they belong to, and what special priviledges they have

    • vaccessrefresh asks the repository server to re-load its access control information. It will both re-load local users and groups from the operating system and re-read the export, group, and alias files

  • The permissions on objects within the repository are defined by attributes (which you can view and change with vattrib)

    • The #owner, #group, and #mode attributes define the owner, group, and user/group/world permissions bits respectively.

    • The #replicate-from, #mastership-from, and #mastership-to attributes define trust boundaries with other peer repositories. (See RemoteCheckoutSetup for more on these.)

• RepositoryRules explains the special rules which apply in the repository filesystem.

• Understand how to purge old build results from the cache

  • VestaWeed is the normal command for purging some builds and keeping others

  • QuickWeed is an alternative which keeps everything in the build cache but cleans up any other files from the repository. (This is useful if you ever erase your cache.)

• Understand how different repositories interact with each other through replication and mastership transfer

  • "Vesta Replication Design" in the vrepl(1) man page gives an overview

  • RemoteCheckoutSetup describes how to set up two peer repositories to allow remote checkout/checkin

• Set up vestaweb the web interface to the Vesta repository

  • You can either replicate it from pub.vestasys.org or download it from SourceForge

• Understand how the builder distributes work to different hosts

  • The RunToolServer daemon accepts tools to be run from the evaluator

  • The evaluator man page describes how platform definitions work and hosts are selected

  • If you have a large number of client hosts, you will probably want to invest some additional effort in keeping the hosts lists in the configuration file up to date

• Learn how to monitor the various servers

  • VCacheMonitor can be used to monitor the cache server

  • Recent pre-releases include a similar tool for the repository server called vreposmonitor

  • Recent pre-releases include a tool called RunToolProbe for checking on the RunToolServer. Older versions may include a program called RunToolTest which is nearly identical.

• Learn to monitor and optimize the build performance and use of the cache

  • Make sure your users writing SDL have read "Controlling Cache Behavior"

  • HowCachingWorks explains some additional details of how the evaluator and cache work together

  • Use VCacheStats to gather information about what's in your cache and find opportunities for optimization

    • See UsingVCacheStats for some tips on what all those statistics mean and how to make optimizations based on them

  • WritingBadSDL gives some tongue-in-cheek anti-advice on build performance

• If you or your users are bringing new tools into a Vesta build process, you should know about RepeatabilityLimits