[Python-Dev] Windows buildbot trick (original) (raw)

David Bolen db3l.net at gmail.com
Fri Jul 18 18🔞34 CEST 2008

Thomas Heller <theller at ctypes.org> writes:

The most annoying thing on the windows buildbots is when Python crashes hard (with a general protection fault or stack overflow, for example). Usually the system pops up a dialog in this case which allows to attach a debugger to the process. This dialog will stay open until the maintainer manually closes it, and will prevent the next builds.

On my boxes I have inserted these two lines into the PythonXY/Scripts/buildbot script, right at the top: import win32api; win32api.SetErrorMode(7) print "SetErrorMode(7) called." These lines prevent the dialog box to be displayed for critical errors.

For my buildbot, I've been running similarly modified buildbot code since late 2007 (in commands.py, surrounding the spawning of a process to execute a step) so it covers any use of the buildbot (mine was also building MSIs). I had to modify buildbot to fix a file upload bug anyway, so didn't mind running a patched version.

Technically using 0x8007 rather than just 7 would also cover a possible missing file dialog, but not crucial.

It hasn't been 100% foolproof, as I seem to recall once or twice still having to clear a dialog, but I think that was from the CRT within Python itself, which there was an old discussion about changing the Python code to initialize differently. It definitely catches the Windows hard failures though.

-- David

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