Re: [RFC] QEMU Gating CI

[Cleber Rosa]

On Mon, Dec 02, 2019 at 05:08:35PM +0000, Peter Maydell wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Dec 2019 at 17:00, Stefan Hajnoczi <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Dec 02, 2019 at 09:05:52AM -0500, Cleber Rosa wrote:
> > > To exemplify my point, if one specific test run as part of "check-tcg"
> > > is found to be faulty on a specific job (say on a specific OS), the
> > > entire "check-tcg" test set may be disabled as a CI-level maintenance
> > > action.  Of course a follow up action to deal with the specific test
> > > is required, probably in the form of a Launchpad bug and patches
> > > dealing with the issue, but without necessarily a CI related angle to
> > > it.
> >
> > I think this coarse level of granularity is unrealistic.  We cannot
> > disable 99 tests because of 1 known failure.  There must be a way of
> > disabling individual tests.  You don't need to implement it yourself,
> > but I think this needs to be solved by someone before a gating CI can be
> > put into use.
> >
> > It probably involves adding a "make EXCLUDE_TESTS=foo,bar check"
> > variable so that .gitlab-ci.yml can be modified to exclude specific
> > tests on certain OSes.
> 
> We don't have this at the moment, so I'm not sure we need to
> add it as part of moving to doing merge testing via gitlab ?
> The current process is "if the pullreq causes a test to fail
> then the pullreq needs to be changed, perhaps by adding a
> patch which disables the test on a particular platform if
> necessary". Making that smoother might be nice, but I would
> be a little wary about adding requirements to the move-to-gitlab
> that don't absolutely need to be there.
> 
> thanks
> -- PMM
> 

Right, it goes without saying that:

1) I acknowledge the problem (and I can have a long conversation
about it :)

2) I don't think it has to be a prerequisite to the "move-to-gitlab"
effort

Thanks,
- Cleber.