tl;dr -- kernel packages will commonly be reported blocked/unblocks by kernel-testing. This is a new mechanism to interlock validated kernel-testing with britney migration.
The current incarnations of britney cannot as yet distinguish running kernels when considering test results. This leads its view of those test results for a specific kernel to include all results for all kernels. This typically leads those test results to flap. As these testing results are reported incorrectly in order to make it possible to ever migrate a kernel britney always condsiders kernel tests as always-failed rather than as regressions. Kernel testing is augmented by a kernel-team run test analyser; their adt-matrix which sieves the results by the running kernel version and summarises those. These now correctly attributed results are currently then fed back to britney via a block-proposed tag via a launchpad tracking bug. This is extremely fragile as the default position in the absence of an appropiate bug is to release the kernel essentially untested. Several times recently kernels have evaded these blocks into the developement release pocket. In discussions with Laney we fleshed out an alternative blocking strategy based on formal "subordinate" britney block/unblock hints. britney block/unblock hints have a very desirable property of stacking block under unblock, so we can place blocks for all versions of a kernel package and only unblock specific tested versions. This prevents any loose versions being released accidentally. We implement this in a similar manner to the hints delegated to the ubuntu-rtm team. we would delegate limited hint capability to the ubuntu-kernel-release team (a new launchpad team). These hints are formally maintained in a separate repository belonging to this new team; one branch per series (mirroring the proposed for for post git migration of the primary hints). This hint file is only be permitted to contain block and unblock hints for kernel packages. This is enforced by a validation step which elides any hints which are not permitted before exposing those blocks as a new hint "user" kernel-testing. These are subordinate blocks/unblocks in the sense that they are overridden by any direct block by a release-team member. That is a block-all source or block linux-xxx in the main hints will trigger any matching unblock in the kernel-testing hints to be elided, ensuring the release-team freeze blocks are honoured. -apw -- Ubuntu-release mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-release
