launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Gary Poster <gary.poster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We know that timeouts are critical bugs.

When we are fixing these, generally we consider it a success if the page loads well with a hot DB cache.  Some pages require some pretty clever tricks to manage this level of success (see Robert's work in https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/787294, for instance).

However, the same page will still create an OOPS with a cold cache.  Occasional cold caches are, AFAIK, unavoidable with our current architecture.  An OOPS means that it is a critical bug.

Therefore, given our current definitions, 

** timeouts are critical bugs until they perform well on a cold cache. **

(https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/742916 is an example if you want one, again with Robert's analysis.)

Past apps I've worked on have regarded hot cache bugs as critical, and cold cache bugs as something to cope with, one way or another.  What LP has now is a higher standard, which is nice, except that we haven't managed to meet the lower one yet.

This might just be an observation that I've shared, and we all nod our heads and move on.  That's fine.  I'm also fine with considering changing our policies.  Options would include the following:

 * cold cache bugs are a lower priority, or even Won't Fix.
 * cold cache bugs are grouped together in a single critical bug which is about keeping out caches hot (I'm not sure what, if anything, can be improved here, to be clear; I'm speaking in the abstract).  That kind of change wouldn't make the problem go away, though; it would just make it less frequent.

Gary