----- Original Message -----
From: "Max Kovgan" <mkovgan@redhat.com> To: devel@ovirt.org Cc: infra@ovirt.org Sent: Wednesday, June 3, 2015 8:22:54 PM Subject: [ovirt-devel] gerrit+ci improvement proposal
Hi everyone! We really want to have reliable and snappy CI: to allow short cycles and encourage developers to write tests.
# Problem
Many patches are neither ready for review nor for CI upon submission, which is OK. But running all the jobs on those patches with limited resources results in: overloaded resources, slow response time, unhappy developers.
# Proposed Solution
To run less jobs we know we don’t need to, thus making more resources for the jobs we need to run. We have been experimenting to make our CI stabler and quicker to respond by using gerrit flags. This has improved in both directions very well internally. Now it seems a good time to let all the oVirt projects to use this. This solution indirectly promotes reviews and quick tests - “to fail early”, yet full blown static code analysis and long tests to run “when ready”.
# How it works
2 new gerrit independent flags are added to gerrit.
## CI flag
Will express patch CI status. Values: * +1 CI passed * 0 CI did not run yet * -1 CI failed
-1 You must have CI error state. Most of the errors I have seen, the CI fail to run, and the failure is not related to the tested patch.
Permissions for setting: project maintainers (for special cases) should be able to set/override (except Jenkins).
## Workflow flag
Will express patch “workflow” state. Values: * 0 Work In Progress * +1 Ready For Review * +2 Ready For Merge Permissions for setting: Owner can set +1, Project Maintainers can set +2
## Review + CI Integration:
Merging [“Submit” button to appear] will require: Review+1, CI+1, Workflow+2 Patch lifecycle now is: --------------------------------------------------------------- patch state |owner |reviewer |maintainer |CI tests |pass --------------------------------------------------------------- added/updated |- |- |- |quick |CI+1 review |Workflow+1|Review+1 |- |heavy |CI+1 merge ready |- |- |Workflow+2 |gating |CI+1 merge |- |- |merge |merge |CI+1
-1 Cannot require CI+1, the CI is not reliable enough yet. Even if the CI will be reliable, a failed test which is not related to the submitted patch should not block unrelated changes.
Changes from current workflow: Owner only adds reviewers, now owner needs to set "Workflow+1" for the patch to be reviewed, and heavily auto-tested. Maintainer now needs to set "Workflow+2" and wait for "Submit" button to appear after CI has completed running gating tests.
-1 This means more work for developers. Instead, make workflow default to +1. If the want to disable the CI, she can set it to 0. Developers need more power and less process overhead. Nir