Folks -

I just had a very good (off-list) discussion where it was brought to my 
attention that one might look at the proposal from the point of view 
that it replaces Installer, Bob & Co. in situ and that there is no role 
for these tools in the proposed process. Nothing could be further from 
the truth.

What I am imagining goes along these lines: Consider Bob running 
daily/weekly builds and then checks if any new fixes have appeared on 
Mantis. If there is anything new, it loads the fix, runs the tests 
inside the image, runs the tests attached to the bug. If this works out 
Bob puts his "stamp of approval" on the fix or commits it directly to 
the repository. In effect, Bob becomes our main harvester doing all the 
boring integration stuff that we can reasonably automate.

This is actually quite similar to what Bob does today - except that Bob 
isn't producing an image but rather commits to the trunk. In any case, 
from my perspective there is a lot of room for Bob and Installer - be 
that in providing up-to-date images from weekly builds, running 
automated test suites, and so on.

I have no intention to get rid of Bob and Installer. I hope that with 
Keith's help we can make maximum use of both since these are valuable 
tools in a successful software development project.

Cheers,
   - Andreas