[infinispan-dev] Let's stop with pull requests

Tue May 29 05:30:57 EDT 2012

When I handle pull reqs, I sometimes see random testsuite failures which often are not related to patch itself. 

What I do then is send an email to an author, or expert in the test with TRACE log and failure information, and ask to look into it.

They might not look into it immediately (for several), but eventually they should get around to doing it, and it's a know issue then.

In this cases, we should maybe disable the tests and mark the person's name, but I don't see an easy way of checking globally which tests are disabled.

Again, this tries to find a balance between improving our testsuite and moving forward with the N other priorities we have.

On May 29, 2012, at 11:24 AM, Galder Zamarreño wrote:

> BuildHive might help somewhat (when it fully works...) but the real problem testsuites will continue to be there:
> 
> 1. Some tests fail randomly, due to concurrency issues or any kind.
> 2. Some tests fail due to differences in environments (CI vs your own machine)
> 
> The problem with this tests will continue as long as people are individually tasked to tackle these failures. I'm yet to see people proactively fixing this stuff, without any external intervention. As long as this is like this, we'll always be reacting to things. 
> 
> Either *we all* behave like Sanne suggests, or we carry on like we've done so far.
> 
> And then thing is that there's a balance to be found between chasing down this annoying failures, and moving the project forward with new functionality, helping paying customers, helping community, fixing bugs that affect functionality, evangelise….etc.
> 
> On May 28, 2012, at 7:18 PM, Manik Surtani wrote:
> 
>> We're actually in the process of setting up BuildHive.  Galder's on it.  :)
>> 
>> On 28 May 2012, at 17:20, Adrian Cole wrote:
>> 
>>> FWIW, might be a good idea trying buildhive a bit, then deciding.  It is working pretty well for jenkins-ci projects, and so much easier than fetch, cherry-pick, test push loop. 
>>> 
>>> In jclouds, we are setting this up as community members are starting to be more brave (ex refactor things that other PRs can trip), and I've needed to put $1 into the jar a few times merging ;)
>>> 
>>> Seems a pragmatic 'wait and see' to try BuildHive a while, but of course, you know better than me about what's the right choice here.
>>> 
>>> If you are having any struggle setting up that, let me or Andrew Phillips know, as we had a change into BuilHive recently to deal with our massive build :)
>>> 
>>> Have fun!
>>> -A
>>> 
>>> On May 28, 2012 1:41 AM, "Manik Surtani" <manik at jboss.org> wrote:
>>> I don't think everyone has to handle tens of PRs a day.  It's more like one per person per day, which IMO isn't unreasonable as long as everyone does their fair share.
>>> 
>>> On 27 May 2012, at 14:51, Bela Ban wrote:
>>> 
>>>> +1000. I completely agree that if someone has to handle tens of pull
>>>> requests per day, he will *not* seriously look into the request, test it
>>>> etc. So IMO this is a farce, and we might as well go back to trusting
>>>> people, rather than wasting their time...
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 5/25/12 1:47 PM, Sanne Grinovero wrote:
>>>>> guys, please don't take me as the one who is again complaining about
>>>>> failing tests; I'm having doubts about the development process and the
>>>>> amount of time this is wasting on all of us.
>>>>> 
>>>>> We're all humans and do mistakes, still it happens so extremely often
>>>>> that this is getting systemic, and discipline could definitely be
>>>>> improved: people regularly send pull requests with failing tests or
>>>>> broken code, and very regularly this is just merged in master.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I did it myself a couple of days ago: didn't notice a failure, all
>>>>> looked good, sent a pull, it was merged with no complaints. Three days
>>>>> later, I resume my work and am appalled to see that it was broken. Now
>>>>> fixing it, but I'll have to send another pull and wait for it - which
>>>>> feels very pointless, as I'm pretty sure nobody is checking anyway.
>>>>> 
>>>>> It looks like as the pull request procedure is having this effect:
>>>>> 
>>>>> # patch writer is not as carefull as he used to be: "someone else
>>>>> will check if it's fine or not. I have no time to run the tests
>>>>> again..".
>>>>> 
>>>>> # reviewer has as quick look. "Looks good - in fact I don't care
>>>>> much, it's not my code and need to return to my own issues.. worst
>>>>> case someone else will fix it blaming the original author"
>>>>> 
>>>>> And then again some incomplete test makes it to master, or a patch
>>>>> which doesn't even compile is integrated.
>>>>> 
>>>>> This pull request process is being a big failure. Shall we stop
>>>>> wasting time on it and just push on master?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Which doesn't mean I'm suggesting "let's make it worse" | "unleash
>>>>> hell": we should all take responsibility on any change very seriously.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Again, I'm not enjoying the role of "whom who complains on the
>>>>> testsuite again". Just stating a fact, and trying to propose something
>>>>> to make it work better. We have great individuals on this team, but we
>>>>> need to admit that team work isn't working and we should deal with it
>>>>> at it's best; denying it won't help.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Sanne
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> Bela Ban, JGroups lead (http://www.jgroups.org)
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> infinispan-dev mailing list
>>>> infinispan-dev at lists.jboss.org
>>>> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/infinispan-dev
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Manik Surtani
>>> manik at jboss.org
>>> twitter.com/maniksurtani
>>> 
>>> Lead, Infinispan
>>> http://www.infinispan.org
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> infinispan-dev mailing list
>>> infinispan-dev at lists.jboss.org
>>> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/infinispan-dev
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> infinispan-dev mailing list
>>> infinispan-dev at lists.jboss.org
>>> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/infinispan-dev
>> 
>> --
>> Manik Surtani
>> manik at jboss.org
>> twitter.com/maniksurtani
>> 
>> Lead, Infinispan
>> http://www.infinispan.org
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> infinispan-dev mailing list
>> infinispan-dev at lists.jboss.org
>> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/infinispan-dev
> 
> --
> Galder Zamarreño
> Sr. Software Engineer
> Infinispan, JBoss Cache
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> infinispan-dev mailing list
> infinispan-dev at lists.jboss.org
> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/infinispan-dev

--
Galder Zamarreño
Sr. Software Engineer
Infinispan, JBoss Cache