Re: [PULL 15/42] tests/functional: enable pre-emptive caching of assets

[Pierrick Bouvier <pierrick.bouvier@linaro.org>]

On 11/27/24 01:06, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 26, 2024 at 04:54:18PM -0600, Richard Henderson wrote:
>> On 11/26/24 11:52, Thomas Huth wrote:
>>> I think we want to continue to maek failing downloads as test failures,
>>> otherwise we'll never notice when an asset is not available from the
>>> internet anymore (since SKIPs just get ignored).
>>
>> I disagree.  Download failures are not rare.
> 
> Failures of the test to download assets will be rare *if* we have the
> CI runner cache fixed. We only need to successfully download each
> asset once, and it should be cached forever with no expiry timeout.
> 
> So we have an initially bootstrapping problem once caching is fixed,
> where download failures could impact us. Once the cache is primed,
> we'll only be at risk of download failures when introducing new
> asset URLs, so I think it is fair to say failures should be rare
> *if* we get the caching fixed.
> 
> With regards,
> Daniel

Beyond the QEMU CI, we should think about users trying to run tests, and 
having the same kind of problems, but without having access to the magic 
cache.

Regarding the assets download, why don't we mirror them somewhere 
reliable instead of relying on third party storage?

It could be another github repo (and we push files in a "release", where 
size is unlimited). In my experience, it's very reliable, and uptime is 
99.999%.

The change is not complicated, and there is no risk to introduce 
regressions, as the hashes will be exactly the same.
We can even do it on a best-effort basis, when one dep start failing.

Pierrick