Bug#935365: buildd.debian.org: allowing self-service givebacks for Failed packages?

2019-08-22 Thread Philipp Kern
Hey Samuel,

thanks for your feedback!

On 8/22/2019 12:17 AM, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> The self-service giveback is currently not available for packages in the
> Failed state. I wonder if such a restriction is really useful.
> 
> The thing is: apparently only I do this, but I always set hurd-i386
> package build failures in the Failed state with the appropriate failure
> log lines, which are very helpful for sorting out the porting work
> (see https://people.debian.org/~sthibault/graph-top.txt), and packages
> maintainers have already told me they appreciate this, because I know
> well the hurd-i386 failures and can thus easily point out the actual
> problems to maintainers.
> 
> But if people can not giveback due to this even in cases where it's a
> transient failure or lagging dependency version, I'am afraid they will
> now not send a mail for giving back on hurd-i386, thinking that I have
> set the Failed state for a stronger reason than I actually meant.
> 
> Put another way, this restriction on the Failed state leads me to think
> I should rather stop setting packages in the Failed state, but then it's
> detrimental to the porting work triaging.

I think I came from the point where Failed is a manually set state that
conveyed a meaning that we should not just erase, especially if we face
opportunistic give-backs. At the same time that sort of depends on the
frequency of the use of this feature.

Traditionally `Failed' was supposed to be for failure states that were
known to require another package upload. I guess what you are saying
here is that you'd also set Failed if another package is at fault. I can
relate to that, as expressive documented failure reasons are always
better than just log tails - if you have the time to add those annotations.

I also don't know if we have a good way of gauging consensus among
porters here. I added buildd-maintainers@ to bcc. Please chime in if you
have an opinion here.

In the end it's easy to do. I'm sympathetic to just allow it and see if
it actually causes trouble. AFAIK we also preserve the last failure
reason in the database and do not immediately wipe it out (TBC).

> Actually, even when the Fail state has been set manually on archs (e.g.
> a know bug affecting all archs), it would still make sense to allow
> maintainers to trigger the giveback when the bug is known to be fixed by
> another package upload.

I really do not want to check if someone is a package's maintainer if I
can avoid it. But then again this is also something that could
legitimately be done by the uploader of the other package anyway.

Kind regards and thanks
Philipp Kern



Bug#935365: buildd.debian.org: allowing self-service givebacks for Failed packages?

2019-08-21 Thread Samuel Thibault
Package: buildd.debian.org
Severity: normal

Hello,

The self-service giveback is currently not available for packages in the
Failed state. I wonder if such a restriction is really useful.

The thing is: apparently only I do this, but I always set hurd-i386
package build failures in the Failed state with the appropriate failure
log lines, which are very helpful for sorting out the porting work
(see https://people.debian.org/~sthibault/graph-top.txt), and packages
maintainers have already told me they appreciate this, because I know
well the hurd-i386 failures and can thus easily point out the actual
problems to maintainers.

But if people can not giveback due to this even in cases where it's a
transient failure or lagging dependency version, I'am afraid they will
now not send a mail for giving back on hurd-i386, thinking that I have
set the Failed state for a stronger reason than I actually meant.


Put another way, this restriction on the Failed state leads me to think
I should rather stop setting packages in the Failed state, but then it's
detrimental to the porting work triaging.


Actually, even when the Fail state has been set manually on archs (e.g.
a know bug affecting all archs), it would still make sense to allow
maintainers to trigger the giveback when the bug is known to be fixed by
another package upload.

Samuel

-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 
'testing-debug'), (500, 'stable-debug'), (500, 'proposed-updates-debug'), (500, 
'proposed-updates'), (500, 'oldstable-proposed-updates-debug'), (500, 
'oldstable-proposed-updates'), (500, 'oldoldstable'), (500, 'buildd-unstable'), 
(500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable'), (500, 'oldstable'), (1, 
'experimental-debug'), (1, 'buildd-experimental'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.2.0 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), 
LANGUAGE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)