Hi Spurious regression failures make developers frustrated. One submits a change and gets completely unrelated failures. The only way out is to retrigger regression until it passes, a boring and time-wasting task. Sometimes after 4 or 5 failed runs, the submitter realize there is a real issue and look at it, which is a waste of time and resources. The fact that we run regression on multiple platforms makes the situation worse. If you have 10% of chances to hit a spurious failure on Linux and a 20% chances to hit a spurious failure on NetBSD (random number chosen), that means you get roughtly a failure for four submissions (random prediction, as I used random input numbers, but you get the idea) Two solutions are proposed: 1) do not run unreliable tests, as proposed by Raghavendra Talur: http://review.gluster.org/13173 I have nothing against the idea, but I voted down the change because it fails to address the need for different test blacklists on different platforms: we do not have the same unreliable tests on Linux and NetBSD. 2) add a regression option to retry a failed test once, and to validate the regression if second attempt passes, as I proposed: http://review.gluster.org/13245 The idea is basicaly to automatically do what every submitter has been doing: retry without a thought when regression fails. The benefit of this approach is also that it gives us a better view of what test failed because of the change, and what test failed because it was unreliable. The retry feature is optionnal and triggered by using the -r flag to run-tests.sh. I intend to use it on NetBSD regression to reduce the number of failures that annoy people. It could be used on Linux regression too, though I do not plan to touch that on my own. Please people tell us what approach you prefer. -- Emmanuel Dreyfus http://hcpnet.free.fr/pubz manu@xxxxxxxxxx _______________________________________________ Gluster-devel mailing list Gluster-devel@xxxxxxxxxxx http://www.gluster.org/mailman/listinfo/gluster-devel
