launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Robert Collins <robertc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 12:10 AM, Gavin Panella
<gavin.panella@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 4 February 2011 04:28, Robert Collins <robertc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> I'm wondering if folk have a particularly strong opinion (and
>> rationale :P) for which we should do first. They are *both* partly
>> implemented, and *both* are likely to have long tails leading to
>> niggly bits to sort out over some weeks.
>
> My gut feeling is that velocity is hurt most when:
>
> 1. Branches get lost in ec2, especially when there's no message to
>   tell me or anyone else about it. I might not notice anything the
>   matter until the following day.

SMM will indeed help with this, but its extremely rare isn't it?
Certainly on an individual basis that would stall.

> 2. Branches get bounced out of pqm. Again, this is exacerbated when
>   there is no message to tell anyone about it. There's also sometimes
>   a need to work with a LOSA to figure out what the reason was.

This is RT 43883 which I've just filed; we really need to get this
/fixed/ and stop having half-stabs at it. I've asked Francis to give
it pri 90 - zomg. Its really affecting developers a lot.

> Both of these problems are worth fixing more than making the test
> suite finish faster because they happen too often, and the delays they
> introduce grow quickly and are without bound (well... there's common
> sense when things get silly).

Is there a bug about issue 1? Any reason we shouldn't escalate that to
critical as an operational issue quite independent of SMM?

> Also, with quicker test suite runs, we may subconsciously loosen our
> belts and not be as aggressive about writing fast tests and gardening
> useless and slow tests.

So you'd rather have a slower test suite thats more maintained? That
seems a bit masochistic to me :). I agree that when things are
pleasant there is little motivation to spend a lot of time fixing the
painless stuff. OTOH if its painless, we have rather achieved the
goal, haven't we?

-Rob