[oe] Building/testing in the EC2 cloud

[Maksym Parkachov]

Hi folks,

In the light of testing discussion recently I wanted to try building
OE image on Amazon EC2 infrastructure. I documented the process and
results on the WiKi
http://wiki.openembedded.net/index.php/EC2CloudBuild .

Basically, building angstrom minimal-image took 2 hours 20 minutes for
the c1.medium virtual machine. I used the spot instance with average
price 0.06$ per hour, so for 3 hours it costed me around $0.20 + VAT.

The supplied script installs all required software and fires the build
automatically. This is basically as "dry" testing as it goes.

Why do you want to use this ?

1. Not having linux is a good reason. The build could be run
completely from the browser and resulting images are downloadable as
well.

2. Extending this procedure to get "Continuous Integration". I could
imagine someone wanting to fire up builds for 20 architectures
simultenously. Here is the time for some corporation to jump and
sponsor testing. It's just credit card away :)

This was just an proof of concept. Do you guys interested in more
research in this area ?

Cheers,
Maksym Parkachov.