1467792 - Using `./mach try syntax` will run jobs that are not meant to run

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Build System :: Task Configuration, task)

Description

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

If I run, for example `./mach try -b o -p win64 -t all[windows10-64-qr]` this will run the xperf talos suite, even though the suite is explicitly disabled on everything except windows7-32 [1]. Note that if I do `./mach try fuzzy` the xperf task for windows10-64-qr is not listed as one of the options (correctly). But with the syntax it still gets run. It would be good if it didn't.

An example try push that includes this problem (with the xperf job getting run) can be found at [2].

[1] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/c621276fbdd9591f52009042d959b9e19b66d49f/taskcluster/ci/test/talos.yml#459
[2] https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=172843c406de113c7405af777423f5740c86f05d&selectedJob=182499921

Comment 1

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

This is expected -- one of the issues with try syntax was that everyone had a different opinion of who's the boss (well, usually they thought it should be themselves).  So someone who wanted a task to not run on try wanted it to never ever run on try no matter what someone else typed.  But for the same job, someone else wanted try to run the tasks that they had specified with their try syntax, whether or not those jobs are "supposed to" run on try.  The result is sometimes it does one, sometimes it does the other.  In this case, the user creating the try syntax wins.  If we were to change that, we'd get another bug in a week or a month wanting to change it back :)

Anyway, for this and other reasons, try syntax is deprecated, and the preferred way to get the tasks you want is to use try-select functionality, including mach try fuzzy and its various presets.

Comment 2

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

I thought that might be the case :) Thanks!