1193787 - Wait cursor for loading Similar jobs appears to be missing

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Tree Management :: Treeherder: Frontend, defect, P3)

Description

[Jonathan French (:jfrench)]

The fa-spinner fa-pulse cursor appears to be ignored for some reason, when Similar Jobs tab content is loading.

https://github.com/mozilla/treeherder/blob/9a2497df868e2fa9ad71d14c4efbe39fd3eb59e9/ui/plugins/similar_jobs/main.html#L123-L125

Steps to reproduce:
o select any job
o select the Similar Jobs tab

Expected:
I think, an fa-wait/pulse cursor while the content loads.

Observed:
An empty pane with the 'show previous jobs' button.

We should also check at the same time for other occurrences of fa-spinner in case anything else is not being triggered.
https://github.com/mozilla/treeherder/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=fa-spinner

Comment 2

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

The similar jobs feature is a bit flaky at the moment, and not used by many people. With hyper-chunking I think its usability is going to get worse (due to varying chunk names), so it's probably not worth investing too much PR/review time into it at the moment, given how short-staffed we are.

Comment 3

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

If that's the case it might be good to just hide that panel so people don't think it's a working/supported part of the UI.

Comment 4

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

Well it does kinda work for certain use-cases, it's just a bit clunky and not something I see as a priority. 

However if no one is using it, I'd gladly remove the feature - it's less to maintain.

Comment 5

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

For reference, the similar jobs API was hit 508 times on production in the last 7 days. Opening the similar jobs tab causes 1 request, pressing the button to show more causes 1 extra each time. More requests than I expected TBH.

Comment 6

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

IMO if you're closing this bug, you're basically saying it's a wontfix, which in turn implies that the feature is no longer being maintained. And if that's the case I'd rather have it removed entirely, because otherwise it's going to give misleading results (due to varying chunk names, as you pointed out) which is worse than not having it at all.

If it's just a matter of "we are short-staffed now and can't get to it until later" then why not just leave the bug open? It's been sitting for a couple of years already, no harm in letting it sit for longer. Or make it mentored, somebody might step up and fix it for you.

Comment 7

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

If a feature is actually broken, then yes I agree it's better to remove it than to leave it lying around not working. 

However the similar jobs feature isn't broken at the moment. It's just not polished, not clear how many people use it, and something that may become less useful at some unknown point in the future when hyper-chunking eventually happens. Removing the feature just because of the mouse cursor not using a spinner (when the content panel already has a spinner) would be a bit of an overreaction.

(In reply to Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail]) from comment #6)
> If it's just a matter of "we are short-staffed now and can't get to it until
> later" then why not just leave the bug open? It's been sitting for a couple
> of years already, no harm in letting it sit for longer. Or make it mentored,
> somebody might step up and fix it for you.

I used to be a believer in that ideal, however it has a few problems in reality:
* having 500 open bugs (formerly 650) makes it harder to triage, avoid dupes, ...
* "will accept PR" still means "have to spend time reviewing/testing/dealing with fallout" plus for mentored bugs, they need tidying up to make sense to someone coming to the project for the first time, and we've regularly had what looked to be simple bugs turn out to be anything but, causing frustration for the contributor and the mentor
* I'd rather contributors work on the bugs that we see as relevant, which means we're not going to steer them towards this bug anyway (we'll point them at the other P3/P5 bugs instead), in which case why leave this bug open?

Comment 8

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

Ok. Not sure I agree with everything, but it's your call. Thanks for the detailed explanation!

Comment 9

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

No problem! I really wish we were given the resources to be able to fix more of the bugs filed (we used to be a team of 5).
Fwiw I've filed bug 1419890 for doubling back to see whether to remove the feature at some point in the future.