Hi, go ahead and call me crazy :) I couldn't sleep last night thinking about the problems that boost has with the testing process. Although the roots of my idea were different it turns out to be very similar to well known SETI@Home project. Therefore I call it Boost@Home :) Solution is simple in following steps: 1. create a vmware image with operating system and a single compiler installed. One vmware image per compiler to ease bugfix and upgrades in the vmware images. 2. let people download as many images (compilers) as they want. They will use it with freely available vmware-server to launch it. 3. After the virtual machine starts (with the compiler) a small program will be automatically executed to await instructions from boost.org. 4. The boost.org website will list the number of available virtual machines and which tests they are currently running. No interaction from the person who runs the virtual machine is required. Once it is launched it obeys instructions from the central boost.org server. Problems: 1. vmware is free to use, but supports only x86 architectures. Fortunately (to my knowledge) every compiler supported by boost has some version working in x86 environment. 2. some compilers require propertiary windows OS. Giving away a clean install of windows is prohibited. We can use ReactOS intead: http://www.reactos.org/ and install the compilers there. 3. It's possible that not every compiler has a version available for free. I'm not sure - is that true? If yes then it's in their interest to help us: - we ask the to provide a free copy of their compiler for the sole purpose of being used by Boost@Home project. - alternatively we drop support for their compiler. I have several machines lying around that could be used to help boost. If deploying a testing farm will become as easy, as downloading a vmware image and starting it - it's obvious that many people will join this. The capcity of boost testing farm can increase more than tenfold! -- Janek Kozicki |