Re: [PATCH 0/2] gitlab: expose installed package info in build logs

[Manos Pitsidianakis <manos.pitsidianakis@linaro.org>]

On Thu, 25 Jul 2024 12:56, Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> wrote:
>On 25/07/2024 11.42, Manos Pitsidianakis wrote:
>> Hello Daniel,
>> 
>> On Wed, 24 Jul 2024 12:55, "Daniel P. Berrangé" <berrange@redhat.com> wrote:
>>> Many times we see a build job start failing, we wonder if the installed
>>> packages have changed since the last passing build. We can rarely
>>> diagnose this, however, since we only have the new container image, not
>>> the old one.
>>>
>> 
>> APT allows you to specify to pin package versions when installing; wouldn't 
>> that help ensure our tests are deterministic?
>
>Even if tests would be more deterministic that way, I also don't think 
>that's what we want: We would test with backlevel packages that users are 
>not using (since they'll normally use the latest version of a package from a 
>certain version of a distro). So in our CI, we would not be able to 
>reproduce the issues that the users are seeing on their systems.
>

Definitely, but the current testing makes it harder to discern the lines 
between QEMU regression and QEMU not working with latest updates. If we 
had e.g. a pinned job and a "latest" job disagreeing we'd know the 
cause. Of course that means extra CI minutes, maintainer upkeep etc etc, 
I know, but this was my reasoning, I don't dismiss testing for what 
users experience. :)

Manos