[Python-buildbots] Idea: have a different buildbot server for unstable workers?

[Michael Felt]

On 3/8/2019 9:47 AM, Victor Stinner wrote:
> Le ven. 8 mars 2019 à 09:11, Victor Stinner <vstinner at redhat.com> a écrit :
>> Oh wait, I wasn't aware of that. Is it something new? I confirm that I
>> saw this code in master.cfg:
>>
>>         if stability == STABLE:
>>             mail_status_builders.append(buildername)
>>             github_status_builders.append(buildername)
>>
>> I started this email thread because I get emails from custom jobs. It
>> seems like this test should be updated to explicitly exclude
>> notifications from custom jobs.
> I proposed https://github.com/python/buildmaster-config/pull/82 to:
>
> * Disable notifications for custom builders
> * Re-enable email notifications for unstable builders
>
> I also proposed https://github.com/python/buildmaster-config/pull/83
> to only run AIX, Alpine Linux and Clang UBSan on the master branch.

I am fine with running only on the master branch - as I long gave up the
fight for back-porting. Hard enough to get people to look at master
(emote: speaking - so also see a smile). For 2.7 the view has been, for
as long as I have been trying, that all my fixes were "new features" so
they were refused. Or some variation of that.

If there is mutual commitment (I'll give mine) to also get the 3.7
branch to PASS, I'll certainly look at that. Some were backported
automagically, others were not.

As to supporting AIX - I obviously, cannot promise 24x7 support - only
best effort for as long as I am able. My goal as a packager is that it
be transparent and what can be installed can be uninstalled. And, imho,
stable Python is in the interest of AIX customers. They are the people I
try to cater to.

And, in that line - if possible, you may add my email address to the
mails the AIX bots send.

Side-question: when do the build-times and success-rate start getting
scored. The PPC64 bot is "stable" in that it does not fail everything.
And if you could accept the change to setup.py to not always give the
preference to ncurses (which is onloy available via third party on AIX)
I hope it would go to full "PASS" status.

FYI - they key difference between the POWER6 and PPC64 bots are not
POWER6 versus POWER8, or AIX 7.1 versus AIX 7.2 - b ut the compiler.
"POWER6" uses xlc (v11) while PPC64 uses "gcc (v7.2 iirc)".
Additionally, my (POWER6) has no "AIXToolbox aka third-party) packages
installed. Anything additional needed is built and packaged using xlc -
to focus the entire runt-time-environment on IBM provided code. And
wheile the bot runs on AIX 7.1 I regularly test manually on AIX 6.1 and
AIX 5.3.

In short, there are some code dependencies that show up when the
compiler is not gcc. They are very hard to find, sadly. I hope finding
them makes CPython more portable and stable. No other reason to pursue them.

Sincerely,

Michael

>
> Victor
>