launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Ian Booth <ian.booth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Well today I caused my first and hopefully last build breakage. Very
sorry. I'll cop the blame, but I claim that part of the cause was the
spurious windmill failures, especially of late.

I had a branch that involved using the new YUI Array.unique() method.
Previously I had coded the required functionality myself but thought
that now we are using YUI 3.2, let's make full use of the available APIs
therein. To get this method, I had to import the YUI collection.js
script into base-layout-macros.pt. The code.windmill tests which used
the new Array.unique() call all passed, so after getting the mp
approved, I submitted to ec2.

It came back with 11 windmill failures, on the surface looking like the
many other recent examples of spurious failures. My direct tests had
passed so I foolishly assumed all was ok and bzr lp-landed the branch.
Bad move. Turns out some other js code in bugs.windmill which I did not
touch broke, almost certainly due to the new YUI collections.js being used.

So, I should have listened to the little guy with a halo over my right
shoulder and properly investigated the windmill failures, instead of the
dude with the pitch fork over my left shoulder. But we were getting so
many "false" failures and I made a bad assumption. Just goes to show how
important it is to get these windmill tests reliable.

Many thanks to wgrant, lifeless and thumper for cleaning up my mess. ie
backing out my revision. I can easily fix the issue by reverting the js
code which used Array.unique() but I'd also like to find out why using
the new YUI collection.js breaks existing code. cause it would be nice
to be able to use all the YUI features available.

Yours humbly,
Ian