[python-committers] Wrongly stopping merges discourages merging.

[Zachary Ware]

Hi Terry,

I have an email going out to AppVeyor with you CCed, we'll see what
kind of response we get (probably tomorrow).  In the meantime, I'll
look into disabling largefile tests, or test_mmap specifically on
AppVeyor to see whether that helps the situation.

On Sun, Jun 3, 2018 at 3:23 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
> When we used hg, core dev committers could actually commit to the repository
> when they judged it appropriate.  When we moved to github, Brett, with
> whoever's approval, decided that we should no longer be trusted to make
> commits without approval of a couple of mindless robots.  However, the
> premise that the robots should be trusted is false.  So I again request that
> there be a manual override for when the robots are obviously giving false
> failures.
>
> Exhibit 1. For at least a couple of weeksin may, faults in the asyncio test
> (and another) caused the asyncio test to randomly fail about half the time.
> With one retest, each CI bot failed about 1/4 the time.  At least one bot of
> the two bots failed about 1/2 the time.  The AppVeyor queue ballooned.
>
> One could decrease the frustration and time to success (but only partly)  by
> only re-starting the bot that failed.  Doing so for Travis is fairly easy.
> Doing so with AppVeyor is obscure and error prone.
>
> I twice requested that the randomly failing tests be disabled.  Victor said
> he wanted to keep monitoring what they did.  I think he overly discounted
> the pain and frustration of having good merges blocked.  I think either 1)
> bad tests should be disabled, or 2. the CI code should be able to ignore
> failures by bad tests, or 3. responsible core devs should be able to.
>
> Exhibit 2. AppVeyor is badly broken.
>
> This morning Cheryl Sabella submitted a nice patch fixing an annoying
> behavior of IDLE's editor/shell/output windows.  The CI tests passed, the
> patch worked great, it only needed expansion of the placeholder blurb.  I
> was really excited.
>
> With some trepidation, I made the edit.  Unfortunately, both CI bots rerun
> the code tests even when the code is unchanged.  Blurb edits should be
> treated as doc-only changes, with only the blurb rechecked.
>
> My trepidation turned out to be well-founded.  My excitement is gone. After
> an error, AppVeyor just quit without reporting any failure cause.
> https://ci.appveyor.com/project/python/cpython/build/3.8build16869
>
> Since then, there have been 2 successes and 7 similar unexplained failures.
> https://ci.appveyor.com/project/python/cpython/history
> https://ci.appveyor.com/project/python/cpython/build/3.6build16871/job/c2q80njh9clnfgjt
> https://ci.appveyor.com/project/python/cpython/build/3.8build16872
> https://ci.appveyor.com/project/python/cpython/build/3.7build16873
> https://ci.appveyor.com/project/python/cpython/build/3.8build16874
> https://ci.appveyor.com/project/python/cpython/build/3.6build16876/job/t9nyt59wkwcn68nk
> https://ci.appveyor.com/project/python/cpython/build/3.8build16877
> https://ci.appveyor.com/project/python/cpython/build/3.8build16878
>
> The last is my restart.  The time wasted by this broken blockbot is time not
> spent doing something useful.  I would really like to have this patch in the
> .rc in a week -- along with a few others that should follow.
>
> Guido once asked what is off-putting about being a core developer.  This is
> one thing.
>
> Terry Jan Reedy
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-- 
Zach