Re: [PATCH 5/6] selftests: Preserve subtarget failures in all/install

[Shuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>]

On 4/15/26 09:42, Ricardo B. Marlière wrote:
> On Wed Apr 15, 2026 at 12:40 PM -03, Shuah Khan wrote:
>> On 4/15/26 07:58, Mark Brown wrote:
>>> On Fri, Mar 20, 2026 at 03:29:20PM -0300, Ricardo B. Marlière wrote:
>>>> Track failures explicitly in the top-level selftests all/install loops.
>>>>
>>>> The current code multiplies `ret` by each sub-make exit status. For
>>>> example, with `TARGETS=net`, the implicit `net/lib` dependency runs after
>>>> `net`, so a failed `net` build can be followed by a successful `net/lib`
>>>> build and reset the final result to success.
>>>>
>>>> Set `ret` to 1 on any non-zero sub-make exit code and keep it sticky, so
>>>> the top-level make returns failure when any selected selftest target
>>>> fails.
>>>
>>> This patch, which is now in mainline as 7e47389142b8, is breaking a
>>> bunch of CI systems - at least KernelCI, our Arm internal CI and my
>>> personal stuff.  It causes the equivalent of FORCE_TARGETS behaviour in
>>> the top level Makefile, the prior behaviour where the exit status of the
>>> top level Makefile ignores failures from individual directories is
>>> desirable since by default we try to build almost all the selftests but
>>> between quality issues and build time dependencies it's very common for
>>> at least one of them to fail.  With this commit unless the user has
>>> configured a more restricted set of selftests it would be surprising if
>>> we manage to get a successful build and install.
>>>
>>> As well as being a poor default due to the very high likelyhood of build
>>> failures this also has the undesirable effect of causing a build failure
>>> in one selftest to cause the whole install target to fail, meaning that
>>> the build failure is escallated to a complete lost of coverge for all
>>> selftests in common CI usage.
>>>
>>> This wasn't showing up in my -next build tests since I set FORCE_TARGETS
>>> and explicitly choose a restricted set of kselftests which actually
>>> build with my system and configuration.  It was less obvious than it
>>> should have been with the other systems since they did not expect there
>>> to be a complete failure to generate a kselftest tarball and variously
>>> masked the error or reported it in a manner that looked like an
>>> infrastructure issue.
>>
>> I didn't see it when I did test on linux-next and my repo. I did install
>> to catch problems.
>>
>> Sorry for not catching this. We can drop this patch.
>>
>>>
>>> It would be really nice to get to the point where we can reasonably do
>>> this but we're simply not there at the current time.  At the moment if
>>> people want to see build failures reported at the top level that really
>>> needs to be opt in, we have FORCE_TARGETS for that.
>>
>> Good point - I will go look and see if we document this in kselftest doc
>> and add it.
> 
> It's not documented. It would have solved my issue, sorry for
> overlooking this!

Ricardo, Would you like to send me doc patch for this?

thanks,
-- Shuah