Re: [PATCH v3 24/24] tests/avocado: disable BootLinuxPPC64 test in CI

["Philippe Mathieu-Daudé" <philmd@linaro.org>]

On 1/3/23 10:57, Alex Bennée wrote:
> 
> Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> writes:
> 
>> On 28/02/2023 20.06, Alex Bennée wrote:
>>> This test is exceptionally heavyweight (nearly 330s) compared to the
>>> two (both endians) TuxRun baseline tests which complete in under 160s.
>>> The coverage is slightly reduced but a more directed test could make
>>> up the difference.
>>> tests/avocado/tuxrun_baselines.py:TuxRunBaselineTest.test_ppc64:
>>> Overall coverage rate:
>>>     lines......: 9.6% (44110 of 458817 lines)
>>>     functions..: 16.5% (6767 of 41054 functions)
>>>     branches...: 6.0% (13395 of 222634 branches)
>>> tests/avocado/boot_linux.py:BootLinuxPPC64.test_pseries_tcg:
>>> Overall coverage rate:
>>>     lines......: 11.6% (53408 of 458817 lines)
>>>     functions..: 18.7% (7691 of 41054 functions)
>>>     branches...: 7.9% (17692 of 224218 branches)
>>> So lets skip for GITLAB_CI and also unless AVOCADO_TIMEOUT_EXPECTED
>>> is
>>> specified by the user.
>>
>> The explanation sounds somewhat implausible to me.
>> AVOCADO_TIMEOUT_EXPECTED should be for jobs where we are not sure
>> whether the job really finishes in time, e.g. when compiling QEMU with
>> debug flags enabled, and not for jobs that simply run a little bit
>> longer (in the latter case, it would be enough to simply bump the
>> timeout setting a little bit if necessary). So did you check whether
>> you really run into timeout issues here when compiling QEMU with debug
>> flags?
> 
> Ahh I realise now that I was running into the timeout because it was a
> gcov build. I'll drop the AVOACADO_TIMEOUT_EXPECTED bit for now.
> 
>>
>> Anyway, if you add AVOCADO_TIMEOUT_EXPECTED, then I think you don't
>> need GITLAB_CI anymore, since we certainly don't set
>> AVOCADO_TIMEOUT_EXPECTED in the gitlab CI.

Correct we won't run AVOCADO_TIMEOUT_EXPECTED on GitLab CI.
Note however GITLAB_CI and AVOCADO_TIMEOUT_EXPECTED are not orthogonal.
See docs/devel/testing.rst:

AVOCADO_TIMEOUT_EXPECTED
...
   Even though the timeout can be set by the test developer, there
   are some tests that may not have a well-defined limit of time
   to finish under certain conditions. For example, tests that take
   longer to execute when QEMU is compiled with debug flags.
   Therefore, the ``AVOCADO_TIMEOUT_EXPECTED`` variable has been
   used to determine whether those tests should run or not.

GITLAB_CI
   A number of tests are flagged to not run on the GitLab CI.
   Usually because they proved to the flaky or there are constraints
   on the CI environment which would make them fail.

Personally I run the Avocado tests on a daily basis without
AVOCADO_TIMEOUT_EXPECTED, but certainly set it before posting
a pull request.