[Qgis-psc] Handling the Travis CI situation

[Alessandro Pasotti]

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
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-- 
Alessandro Pasotti
QCooperative:  www.qcooperative.net
ItOpen:   www.itopen.it