[Qgis-psc] Handling the Travis CI situation

Thu Jan 28 12:53:41 PST 2021

On Thu, 12 Nov 2020 at 23:59, Marco Bernasocchi <marco at qgis.org> wrote:
>
> thanks everyone for the all the information and feedback, it was really helpful in preparing the budget proposal.

Can I ask what the status on this request is? Travis has become
completely unworkable over the last week, with new jobs taking 10hrs+
to start, and then failing instantly because of the docker limits.
It's really slowing down the bug fixing efforts, and I fear that if it
degrades any further we'll be forced to just turn off Travis and as a
result have NO regression testing protecting the QGIS codebase! argh
:O

Nyall

>
> cheers Marco
>
> On Mon, 9 Nov 2020, 10:40 Alessandro Pasotti, <apasotti at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Great, thanks!
>>
>> You've done a really good job there.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 9, 2020 at 10:20 AM Denis Rouzaud <denis.rouzaud at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Le lun. 9 nov. 2020 à 09:06, Alessandro Pasotti <apasotti at gmail.com> a écrit :
>> >>
>> >> On Mon, Nov 9, 2020 at 12:55 AM Nyall Dawson <nyall.dawson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> > On Fri, 6 Nov 2020 at 20:57, Matthias Kuhn <matthias at opengis.ch> wrote:
>> >> > >
>> >> > > This would be desirable.
>> >> > >
>> >> > > It's unfortunately a bit of complexity included. As Alessandro said, the rendering tests are a good example of tests which are hard to maintain and - unfortunately - not well defined functions like we happen to have on e.g. database engine unit tests.
>> >> > >
>> >> > > To recall, when we started with CI some 5 years ago we were in the situation that we had a set of tests, which randomly passed on some dev machines and some on others. So effectively you had no chance to know if a test doesn't pass because of your machine or your patch.
>> >> > >
>> >> > > At least now we have a reference platform and know if a patch actually does cause changes. Which is the most important information.
>> >> > >
>> >> > > Currently many of the tests are already cross platform. And nobody is actively writing CI centric tests. It's just a matter of fact that the tests have a requirement to at least pass on the CI env because it's the only thing that can be enforced.
>> >> > >
>> >> > > When tests are updated to a new platform (ci or not), many of them will pass on a wider variety of platforms. Because bugs are fixed or they are made more generic. And some will just have reference images for one more platform added.
>> >> > >
>> >> > > So whatever we do we will do a step into the right direction. But there will be no guarantee that every test passes on your machine except if you make them all pass on your machine - which would be very welcome!!
>> >> > >
>> >> > > What you could also do is listing tests that are generic / platform independent (e.g. the expression tests would be a very good example) and then always just run these instead of the whole set of tests.
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > Just to add a few extra thoughts to the already comprehensive replies
>> >> > given by Matthias and Denis:
>> >> >
>> >> > - we had to do a very similar effort with updating existing tests when
>> >> > we moved from Qt 4 -> Qt 5. We'll probably have to do another similar
>> >> > effort in another 18-24 months or so. It's going to be a regular,
>> >> > recurring task to go through and update all the tests which have been
>> >> > introduced since the previous effort and ensure that they are
>> >> > sufficiently tolerant to pass under different environments/software
>> >> > versions. (Maybe we should consider adding "test maintenance" as a
>> >> > regular yearly expense of the nature of 1.5 weeks?)
>> >> > - we really should do a similar effort to get the existing tests
>> >> > passing under mac os and windows too. I suspect there's some valid
>> >> > bugs that the test suites would reveal if we could reliably run them
>> >> > under windows/mac, but the real issues are drowned in the noise of
>> >> > tests which haven't been designed to be cross platform compatible.
>> >> > (This could be a good grant proposal idea for future funding rounds!)
>> >> >
>> >> > And then my personal 2c:
>> >> >
>> >> > We have a great test suite, and fantastic tools for making and
>> >> > managing tests. Sure, there's a learning curve involved with them.
>> >> > Sure, they ARE different to the test suites used by gdal, or geos, or
>> >> > <insert other project here>. But that's just business as usual in
>> >> > software development, and not at all reflective of inferiority in the
>> >> > test suites. Can we please move on from this recurring point once and
>> >> > for all and focus on the current relevant parts of this discussion
>> >> > instead?
>> >> >
>> >> > Nyall
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Hi,
>> >>
>> >> While I agree on all points, there is one important thing that we
>> >> should make it better while we work on it:
>> >> make sure the test suite can **easily** run locally using the same
>> >> docker images we are using in the CI process, I can do it but I cannot
>> >> say it was easy to set up and it's probably overly complicated for
>> >> most people.
>> >
>> >
>> > The new github workflow is far more simple and easier to read than the travis config.
>> > Everything is in one file and should be easily replicable.
>> > https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/blob/test-focal/.github/workflows/run-tests.yml#L101-L124
>> >
>> >>
>> >> Also, making the test suite independent from the particular CI we will
>> >> use (GH workflows, Travis & C.) will make it easier to move it to
>> >> another CI if needed.
>> >
>> >
>> > It should!
>> > Let's when we move the CI for 3.16 to Github: the base image will remain (bionic) and we shouldn't have anything to touch in the tests.
>> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> This is of course also a matter of producing a good documentation for
>> >> the process and the tools.
>> >>
>> >> Kind regards.
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Alessandro Pasotti
>> >> QCooperative:  www.qcooperative.net
>> >> ItOpen:   www.itopen.it
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> Qgis-psc mailing list
>> >> Qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org
>> >> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-psc
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Alessandro Pasotti
>> QCooperative:  www.qcooperative.net
>> ItOpen:   www.itopen.it
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