[Cdash] Timestamps

[Tobias Kaupp]

Hi all,

we've setup a dashboard here in Australia. Everything worked nicely out of the 
box. However, we're totally confused about how the timestamps work. Here's an  
example of an experimental build:

===============
$ tkaupp at hemp:~/svn/gearbox/build$ date
Thu Apr 17 16:14:10 EST 2008

#This is my local time in Sydney. EST is actually AEST (Eastern Standard Time 
#for Australian time zones), not the North American EST.
===============

=====================
tkaupp at hemp:~/svn/gearbox/build$ ctest -D Experimental
  Site: hemp
   Build name: Linux-g++
Create new tag: 20080417-0614 - Experimental

#This seems to be UTC, right?
=====================
...
=====================
Submit files (using http)
   Using HTTP submit method
   Drop site: http://cdash.acfr.usyd.edu.au/submit.php?project=Gearbox
   Uploaded: /home/tkaupp/svn/gearbox/build/Testing/20080417-0614/Build.xml
   
Uploaded: /home/tkaupp/svn/gearbox/build/Testing/20080417-0614/Configure.xml
   Uploaded: /home/tkaupp/svn/gearbox/build/Testing/20080417-0614/Test.xml
   Using HTTP trigger method
   Trigger site: 
http://cdash.acfr.usyd.edu.au/cgi-bin/Submit-Random-TestingResults.cgi
   Dart server triggered...
   Submission successful
=====================


Here's my Build.xml. It says EST here:

===================================================
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Site BuildName="Linux-g++" BuildStamp="20080417-0614-Experimental" 
Name="hemp" Generator="ctest2.4-patch 8">
<Build>
        <StartDateTime>Apr 17 16:14 EST</StartDateTime>
<BuildCommand>/usr/bin/make -i</BuildCommand>
        <Log Encoding="base64" Compression="/bin/gzip">
        </Log>
        <EndDateTime>Apr 17 16:14 EST</EndDateTime>
<ElapsedMinutes>0</ElapsedMinutes></Build>
</Site>

==================================================

Then, on the actual website, the submission shows up with timestamp: 
2008-04-18 07:14:00 EST (see 
http://cdash.acfr.usyd.edu.au/index.php?project=Gearbox&date=20080418). 
Furthermore, the webpage only displays the result much later (but it receives 
it straight away as indicated by the Submissions column on the index.php 
page).

I looked through the php code and noticed a comment about Australian timestamp 
not being recognised. It also seems that AEDT is expected from the XML file 
which is not generated properly by ctest:

==================================
/** Return timestamp from string
 *  \WARNING this function needs improvement */
function str_to_time($str,$stamp)
{
  $str = str_replace("Eastern Standard Time","EST",$str);
  $str = str_replace("Eastern Daylight Time","EDT",$str);
  
  // For some reasons the Australian time is not recognized by php
  // Actually an open bug in PHP 5.
  $offset = 0; // no offset by default
  if(strpos($str,"AEDT") !== FALSE)
{
    $str = str_replace("AEDT","UTC",$str);
    $offset = 3600*11;
}
==================================

I also tried nightly builds with "set(CTEST_NIGHTLY_START_TIME "04:00:00 
AEDT")" but the Build.xml shows EST again (as above). I can send you a full 
record of this if you like.

What we'd like to see is that submissions show up on the webpage straight away 
with a build timestamp in local time (AEST or AEDT I guess).

I stopped tracking the problems down at this point. I haven't checked entries 
in the actual MySQL database. We're running CDash version 0.8.

Your help with this would be appreciated. Thanks!

Cheers, Tobias

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------
Tobias Kaupp

ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems          
(Australian Centre for Field Robotics)            
The Rose St Building, J04                          
The University of Sydney, NSW 2006                      
Australia                                              

Phone:  +61 2 9351 7154
Fax:    +61 2 9351 7474
Email:  t.kaupp at cas.edu.au
Web:    http://www.cas.edu.au/content.php/232.html?personid=45
--------------------------------------------------------------