[PKG-Openstack-devel] Bug#834964: testresources: FTBFS too much often (failing tests)

[Thomas Goirand]

On 09/10/2016 09:00 PM, Santiago Vila wrote:
> Some people here have the theory (which I don't share) that it's ok
> that a package FTBFS sometimes as far as it builds "most of the time",
> i.e. the RC-ness is apparently based on a statistical measure.

Build predictability (and in fact, reproducibility) is indeed key, and I
share your view.

> My reaction to that is to file bugs with the subject that you have
> already seen before this one: FTBFS too much often.
> 
> However, since a 100% failure rate is also "too much" (our goal is a
> failure rate of 0%), the subject is also ok, by definition, for
> packages which always fail.

I don't agree, I find it confusing: if a package always fail, you're
here telling "too much" which makes the reader believe that sometimes it
does build well, which is sometimes not the case with the bugs you reported.

> Since I use a template and a script to create the bug reports, I don't
> bother to remove the "too much often" from the subject when the
> package always fail.

IMO, if you want to keep always the same build title, just remove "too
much often". If you experienced an FTBFS, that's enough for an RC. Best
would be if you could differentiate, but if you can't, just don't write
about the fact it sometimes work.

> Closing the bug without asking is a little bit rude, IMHO.

Here, it is my view that you are interpreting this as rude. Bug triaging
in a project as big as packaging OpenStack is very important. I just
thought it was a false positive: this may happen, you know. You see,
everything is about perspective. Like the CoC says: assume good faith...

> I'm a human like you and I make mistakes

Sure, and so am I.

> Congratulations. I estimate that the failure rate is around 8.2% so
> make sure that you try enough times for something with such
> probability to happen.

Considering that in debian/rules, there's the exclude thing, I'd say it
smells like a bug in nose, which should exclude the test but doesn't.
I'll just patch out the test instead of trying to exclude it then, so
we'll be sure that it will not fail to build.

> But you will really go faster if you read the message I wrote
> yesterday night:
> 
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=834964#20
> 
> After you read it, please consider raising to serious, it's a FTBFS bug.

It doesn't really mater, as I'll fix it ASAP.

Cheers,

Thomas Goirand (zigo)