llvm dev - Jan 2022 - [EXTERNAL] Re: Responsibilities of a buildbot owner

Stella wrote:
> The few times I’ve made commits to llvm, for example, I’ve always
> gotten at least one email about a break that was unrelated to my
> change (because my changes are perfect, thank you very much). This
> larger problem of build breaks is much harder to address than flaky
> bots or tests, but I think would improve the health of llvm &
> friends significantly more (and in the meantime, we could tolerate
> some “flakiness”).
This is consistent enough that if I don’t get a bot email, I wonder
if my “git push” failed. 😊 The project very much needs a functioning
pre-commit sanity check of some kind.  What we have now is Phabricator
running something that basically always fails, making it largely
useless.  But that is straying from the topic of bot-owner
responsibilities.

On that topic, however, I would like to request a way to actively get
help with a bot failure. A little while ago I tried to commit a patch
to lit, which after a couple of tries, passed everywhere except *one*
test on *one* bot.  I asked for help on llvm-dev and got no reply.
The patch is reverted and remains on a back burner because I couldn’t
get help.  At some point I will try again, but I suspect there won’t
be a way to solve the problem without the active help of the bot owner,
whoever it is.  How do you find a bot owner, anyway?

Thanks,
--paulr

On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 2:08 PM <paul.robinson at sony.com> wrote:
> Stella wrote:
> > The few times I’ve made commits to llvm, for example, I’ve always
> > gotten at least one email about a break that was unrelated to my
> > change (because my changes are perfect, thank you very much). This
> > larger problem of build breaks is much harder to address than flaky
> > bots or tests, but I think would improve the health of llvm &
> > friends significantly more (and in the meantime, we could tolerate
> > some “flakiness”).
>
> This is consistent enough that if I don’t get a bot email, I wonder
> if my “git push” failed. 😊 The project very much needs a functioning
> pre-commit sanity check of some kind.  What we have now is Phabricator
> running something that basically always fails, making it largely
> useless.  But that is straying from the topic of bot-owner
> responsibilities.
>
> On that topic, however, I would like to request a way to actively get
> help with a bot failure. A little while ago I tried to commit a patch
> to lit, which after a couple of tries, passed everywhere except *one*
> test on *one* bot.  I asked for help on llvm-dev and got no reply.
> The patch is reverted and remains on a back burner because I couldn’t
> get help.  At some point I will try again, but I suspect there won’t
> be a way to solve the problem without the active help of the bot owner,
> whoever it is.  How do you find a bot owner, anyway?
>
You should be able to get the email address for the buildbot owner & email
them directly (probably good to also include llvm-dev, though (with the
move to discourse - maybe you can tag the buildbot owner in a post? be good
to make sure all buildbot owners are on discourse and readily identifiable
from the buildbot owner info in buildbot)). If they don't reply/help after
some time I think it's reasonable to consider the configuration
unsupported/silence the buildbot, etc.
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Hi Stella,
> This larger problem of build breaks is much harder to address than flaky
bots or
> tests, but I think would improve the health of llvm & friends
significantly more (and
> in the meantime, we could tolerate some “flakiness”).
There is some work in progress which will hopely improve this.

Hi Paul,
> How do you find a bot owner, anyway?
There are few ways, one is described at
https://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#working-with-the-ci-system.

Basically, everywhere you can see worker detailed information in the
buildbot WebUI, it shows who administers that host.

You may want to contact the owner of that *one* bot and see if it is
possible to validate your patch before you commit.

If an owner does not respond it might mean those builders are unsupported.
Usually owners are very good at helping.

Thanks

Galina


On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 2:08 PM <paul.robinson at sony.com> wrote:
> Stella wrote:
> > The few times I’ve made commits to llvm, for example, I’ve always
> > gotten at least one email about a break that was unrelated to my
> > change (because my changes are perfect, thank you very much). This
> > larger problem of build breaks is much harder to address than flaky
> > bots or tests, but I think would improve the health of llvm &
> > friends significantly more (and in the meantime, we could tolerate
> > some “flakiness”).
>
> This is consistent enough that if I don’t get a bot email, I wonder
> if my “git push” failed. 😊 The project very much needs a functioning
> pre-commit sanity check of some kind.  What we have now is Phabricator
> running something that basically always fails, making it largely
> useless.  But that is straying from the topic of bot-owner
> responsibilities.
>
> On that topic, however, I would like to request a way to actively get
> help with a bot failure. A little while ago I tried to commit a patch
> to lit, which after a couple of tries, passed everywhere except *one*
> test on *one* bot.  I asked for help on llvm-dev and got no reply.
> The patch is reverted and remains on a back burner because I couldn’t
> get help.  At some point I will try again, but I suspect there won’t
> be a way to solve the problem without the active help of the bot owner,
> whoever it is.  How do you find a bot owner, anyway?
>
> Thanks,
> --paulr
>
>
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