Re: [PATCH 09/12] generic/251: constrain runtime via time/load/soak factors

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>]

On Tue, Nov 19, 2024 at 12:45:05PM +1100, Dave Chinner wrote:
> Question for you: Does your $here directory contain a .git subdir?
> 
> One of the causes of long runtime for me has been that $here might
> only contain 30MB of files, but the .git subdir balloons to several
> hundred MB over time, resulting is really long runtimes because it's
> copying GBs of data from the .git subdir.

Or the results/ directory when run in a persistent test VM like the
one for quick runs on my laptop.  I currently need to persistently
purge that for just this test.

> 
> I have this patch in my tree:
> 
> --- a/tests/generic/251
> +++ b/tests/generic/251
> @@ -175,9 +175,12 @@ nproc=20
>  # Copy $here to the scratch fs and make coipes of the replica.  The fstests
>  # output (and hence $seqres.full) could be in $here, so we need to snapshot
>  # $here before computing file checksums.
> +#
> +# $here/* as the files to copy so we avoid any .git directory that might be
> +# much, much larger than the rest of the fstests source tree we are copying.
>  content=$SCRATCH_MNT/orig
>  mkdir -p $content
> -cp -axT $here/ $content/
> +cp -ax $here/* $content/

Maybe we just need a way to generate more predictable file system
content?