Major Description
It's currently quite tedious to set up an environment in which the Avro test suites for all supported languages can be run, and in which release candidates can be built. This is especially so when we need to test against several different versions of a programming language or VM (e.g. JDK6/JDK7/JDK8, Ruby 1.8.7/1.9.3/2.0/2.1).
Our shared Hudson server isn't an ideal solution, because it only runs tests on changes that are already committed, and maintenance of the server can't easily be shared across the community.
I think a Docker image might be a good solution, since it could be set up by one person, shared with all Avro developers, and maintained by the community on an ongoing basis. But other VM solutions (Vagrant, for example?) might work just as well. Suggestions welcome.
Related resources:
- Using AWS (setting up an EC2 instance for Avro build and release): https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/AVRO/How+To+Release#HowToRelease-UsingAWSforAvroBuildandRelease
- Testing multiple versions of Ruby in CI: AVRO-1515