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Electric Cloud Rains Clarity on Build Process


New tool gives developers insight into parallel build log files

By Alex Handy
December 15, 2005 — 
During the development process, it’s easy to tell when a build is going on: Everyone’s usually gone home for the night. But when a build is still compiling the next morning, it’s a good bet something’s gone sideways in the compiler. Specializing in cluster-based builds, Electric Cloud on Nov. 15 released ElectricInsight, a tool that it claims gives developers a view into just what’s going on inside those parallel builds on compilation clusters.

Mike Maciag, Electric Cloud’s CEO, said that for build engineers, dealing with the reliability, performance and debugging issues of their builds has traditionally been a black art. ”For the first time, we’re taking the build out of the black box,” said Maciag. He described build log files that are hundreds of thousands of pages long, incomplete and not human-readable. “I have two choices: Either do nothing, or find someone who’s very skilled to spend days or weeks crawling through these pages of log files. What ElectricInsight has done is it has taken the days or weeks and made them into minutes.”

ElectricInsight is the brainchild of Eric Melski, a senior engineer at Electric Cloud. He said the software works by creating a virtualized server on the build cluster using Electric Cloud’s file system, which allows ElectricInsight to observe exactly which files are being accessed and which nodes of the cluster are currently working. It then translates the disparate log file entries and displays them graphically.

“We’re now able to give you a visual representation of [the build process],” said Melski. “You could have one node working and four nodes idle. Do I need to change something in my make file or something in my jobs to make this faster?”

Maciag went on to explain more scenarios in which ElectricInsight could be useful. “For example, let’s say that there’s a serialization in there somewhere in a parallel build. There are thousands of jobs that take place during the build—one might be creating a serialization that’s slowing it down. There’s almost no way for me to figure that out without ElectricInsight. You can see down to the job level and see where it’s being serialized. From a breakage standpoint, I can draw down right into the individual jobs and see if there are conflicts, and where they are.”

With the release of ElectricInsight, Electric Cloud has renamed its namesake cluster-based build software as ElectricAccelerator. The company released version 3.0 of the software at the end of November, with the primary changes being compatibility with ElectricInsight.

Currently, ElectricInsight works only with ElectricAccelerator, though Maciag said his company is considering offering a version that works with other cluster-based compilers.

ElectricInsight is available today and costs US$20,000 per cluster. ElectricAccelerator costs $2,000 per seat.


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