[Python-Dev] Looking after the buildbots (in general)

[exarkun at twistedmatrix.com]

On 03:31 pm, barry at python.org wrote:
>On Aug 04, 2010, at 03:15 PM, exarkun at twistedmatrix.com wrote:
>>On 02:51 pm, barry at python.org wrote:
>>>On Aug 04, 2010, at 11:16 AM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
>>>>I think the issue is that many core developers don't have the reflex
>>>>to check buildbot state after they commit some changes (or at least
>>>>on a regular, say weekly, basis), and so gradually the buildbots 
>>>>have
>>>>a tendency to turn from green to red, one after another.
>>>
>>>I'd classify this as a failure of the tools, not of the developers.
>>>>These post-commit verification steps should be proactive, and scream
>>>>really >loud (or
>>>even prevent future commits) until everything is green again.
>>>>Buildbots themselves can be unstable, so this may or may not be
>>>>workable, and >changing
>>>any of this will take valuable volunteer time.  It's also unsexy 
>>>work.
>>
>>How hard is it to look at a web page?
>
>That's not the right question :)
>
>The real questions are: how hard is it to remember how to find the 
>appropriate
>web page

Oh, come on.  I don't believe this.
>how hard is it to know which buildbots are *actually* stable enough
>to rely on,

This is more plausible.  But it's not the tools' fault that the test 
suite has intermittent failures.  Developers choose to add new features 
or change existing ones instead of fixing bugs in existing code or 
tests.  I'd call that a developer failure.
>how hard is it to decipher the results to know what they're
>telling you?

Red bad, green good.

A much more plausible explanation, to me, is that most developers don't 
really care if things are completely working most of the time.  They're 
happy to push the work onto other developers and onto the release team. 
And as long as other developers let them get away with that, it's not 
likely to stop.

But perhaps the people picking up the slack here don't mind and are 
happy to keep doing it, in which case nothing needs to change.

Jean-Paul