1420903 - Provide a debug flag in .taskcluster.yml to aid troubleshooting

Status: REOPENED

(Taskcluster :: Services, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Dustin J. Mitchell [:dustin] (he/him)]

Inspired by bug 1420242, copied from @petemoore in https://github.com/taskcluster/taskcluster-rfcs/issues/102#issuecomment-346804197

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Let's provide a debug option in .taskcluster.yml in github repositories that makes taskcluster extra "chatty". When a task is not triggered, e.g. because branch filtering prevents it, it can post a message against the commit / PR that explains why it did not trigger a task. This could also apply if the user doesn't have adequate permissions. It could also leave a message with the webhook payload it received, and optionally the message payload that it wrote to any pulse exchange, together with the name of the pulse exchange it wrote to.

Having this debug mode will be really useful when people are setting up new projects, and can't work out why tasks are not getting triggered. The idea would be, so long as taskcluster-github receives a call from a webhook, it would attempt to add debugging information to the PR/commit/tag/release that triggered it, even if it is a no-op.

Comment 1

[Brian Stack [:bstack]]

Hey yd,

Any interest in taking this on once we land your current work?

Comment 2

[Yashvardhan Didwania [:ydidwania]]

Yes Brian, I would be happy to work on it.
Just waiting for the no-deploy period to end :)

Comment 3

[Dustin J. Mitchell [:dustin] (he/him)]

YD, do you still want to work on this?  Otherwise we could make it a mentored bug.

Comment 4

[Yashvardhan Didwania [:ydidwania]]

I will not be able to work on it. Can I mentor it though?

Comment 5

[Dustin J. Mitchell [:dustin] (he/him)]

Awesome, yeah!

Comment 6

[Dustin J. Mitchell [:dustin] (he/him)]

This is good background for a rethink of the GitHub integration.

Comment 7

[ansah]

I came across this issue via codetribute and would love to work on this as my first contribution. I’ve gone through the contribution guidelines, but I’d appreciate any pointers on where to start or any relevant docs to check.

Comment 8

[Yarik Kurmyza [:yarik] (he/him) (UTC+1)]

Hi ansah, thanks for the interest!
You can start with the documentation of github service and .taskcluster.yml definition - https://community-tc.services.mozilla.com/docs/reference/integrations/github/taskcluster-yml-v1
Here is one of the more complex ones that taskcluster itself is using - https://github.com/taskcluster/taskcluster/blob/main/.taskcluster.yml
A more simple option is here - https://github.com/taskcluster/tc-dev-integration-test/blob/main/.taskcluster.yml

Since then we have introduced already some debugging functionality in the UI: https://community-tc.services.mozilla.com/tcyaml-debug?url=https%3A%2F%2Fraw.githubusercontent.com%2Ftaskcluster%2Ftc-dev-integration-test%2Frefs%2Fheads%2Fmain%2F.taskcluster.yml#findings

Which is sending requests to this endpoint: https://docs.taskcluster.net/docs/reference/integrations/github/api#renderTaskclusterYml

However, I believe, we have also implemented most of the original ideas already through comments - github integration will send comments to PR or commits when it encounters those errors, so I'm afraid there's not much to do in here, and maybe we should close it

Comment 9

[ansah]

Oh okay, thanks for the update.