[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

RFR: email about regressions [was: Dealing with ci.d.n for package regressions]



Hi all,

On 06-05-18 07:27, Paul Gevers wrote:
>> But, anyway, thanks for your effort, but it obviously doesn't scale to
>> have the central infrastructure team triage things.  How easy would it
>> be to have the CI automatically send an email to the maintainers of
>> the rdependency and the dependency ?
> 
> I have already created multiple personal scripts to parse excuses.yaml
> and store state on regressions, so this is trivial. However, people have
> voiced their concerns about auto creation of bugs. I estimate that a
> plain email for now is acceptable. I think I'll ask about converting the
> email to a bug I guess. I'll create a cronjob that does this soon,
> putting myself in CC to follow the discussion as it would actually
> reduce my work for now.

Please find a proposed text for such an e-mail below. Comments or
improvements very welcome.

Paul

=============================================================
To: $trigger@packages.debian.org, $broken@packages.debian.org
CC: elbrus@debian.org
Subject: New version of $trigger breaks autopkgtest of $broken in testing

Dear maintainers,

[This e-mail is automatically sent.]

As recently announced¹ Debian is now running autopkgtests in testing to
check if migration of a new source package causes regressions. It does
this with the binary packages of the new version of a source package
from unstable.

With the upload of version $ver of $trigger the autopkgtest of $broken
started to fail in testing². This is currently delaying the migration of
$trigger version ${ver}³.

This e-mail is meant to trigger direct communication between the
maintainers of the involved packages as one party has insight in what
changed and the other party insight in what is being tested. After all,
a regression in a reverse dependency can come due to one of the
following reasons (of course not complete):
* new bug in the candidate package (fix the package)
* bug in the test case that only gets triggered due to the update (fix
  the reverse dependency, but see below)
* out-of-date reference date in the test case that captures a former bug
  in the candidate package (fix the reverse dependency, but see below)
* deprecation of functionality that is used in the reverse dependency
  and/or its test case (discussion needed)

Unfortunately sometimes a regression is only intermittent. Ideally this
should be fixed, but it may be OK to just have the autopkgtest retried
(a link is available in the excuses³).

There are cases where it is required to have multiple packages migrate
together to have the test cases pass, e.g. when there was a bug in a
regressing test case of a reverse dependency and that got fixed. In that
case the test cases need to be triggered with both packages from
unstable (reply to this e-mail and/or contact the ci-team⁴) or just wait
until the aging time is over (if the fixed reverse dependency migrates
before that time, the failed test can be retriggered³).

Of course no system is perfect. In case a framework issue is suspected,
don't hesitate to raise the issue via bts or to the ci-team⁴ (reply to
me is also fine for initial cross-check).

To avoid stepping on peoples toes, this e-mail is not automatically
generating a bug in the bts, but it is highly recommended to forward
this e-mail there (psuedo-header boilerplate below⁵⁶) in case it is
clear which package should solve this regression.

¹ https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2018/05/msg00001.html
² https://ci.debian.net/packages/$b/$broken/testing/amd64/
³ https://qa.debian.org/excuses.php?package=$trigger
⁴ #debci on oftc or debian-ci@lists.debian.org
⁵ $trigger has an issue
============
Source: $trigger
Version: $ver
Severity: normal or higher
Control: affects -1 src:$broken
User: debian-ci@lists.debian.org
Usertags: breaks
============
⁶ $broken has an issue
============
Source: $broken
Version: $ver_of_broken_that_ran
Severity: normal or higher
Control: affects -1 src:$trigger
User: debian-ci@lists.debian.org
Usertags: needs-update
============

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature


Reply to: