476656 - allow specifying build status=exception

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Webtools Graveyard :: Tinderbox, enhancement)

Description

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

Currently the build mails can specify status=success/testfail/busted. Since most of our builds are on buildbot now, we sometimes hit errors that occur in buildbot itself rather than the build. For example, if a build slave disconnects, or if there's an error in our buildbot config. The buildbot waterfall displays these as an "exception" status, with a purple box. When we send mail to Tinderbox, however, we have to call it "busted", so it's hard to distinguish "failed to compile" from "problem with the build automation". It would be nice if we could specify "status=exception" or something similar, to indicate that the build was not successful, but the problem lies in the build automation.

Comment 1

[cls]

This is another one of those slippery slope items.  What's the difference between a failure to compile, failure to pull from VCS, failure to run configure or a 'tee: write error'? (I see the last one a lot.)  In the end, they all mean the same thing: the build did not successfully complete.  

So what do you want the server to do for status=exception ?  Change the column header to purple?  Or just add a special message to the specific build?  The latter could also be done with TinderboxPrint: .

Comment 2

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

Mostly I'd like to see a different color. The impetus here is that people want to be able to see whether their code is ok or not, without having to dig into the logs or know about all the possible types of failure. I agree that it's not always clear which is which, but ideally only "failure to compile" would turn the tree red, so that if you see red, you know your code is to blame. If you see purple (or whatever), you can ask the build team to fix it.

Comment 3

[cls]

Attachment: v1.0

Adds support for status=exception
* Turns the fields purple (#770088) for exception

Comment 4

[cls]

v1.0 has been checked into tbox1_20080527_cls_branch

Comment 5

[Aki Sasaki (not active)]

Attachment: Updating the above patch to work vs. trunk

... Do I review cls' patch? Does cls review this version of his patch?

We do want this for bug 487112 and other non-code related issues.

I've tested this locally on my laptop and was able to create a purple column by sending a status of 'exception' rather than 'busted', so if cls' patch needs review from me, consider this an r+.

Comment 6

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

Comment on attachment 372524 [details] [diff] [review]
Updating the above patch to work vs. trunk

Looks fine to me from a quick review.

Comment 8

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

mozilla/webtools/tinderbox/README 	1.16
mozilla/webtools/tinderbox/processbuild.pl 	1.72
mozilla/webtools/tinderbox/showbuilds.pl 	1.38
mozilla/webtools/tinderbox/tbglobals.pl 	1.72

Comment 9

[Aki Sasaki (not active)]

http://tinderbox-stage.mozilla.org/showbuilds.cgi?tree=MozillaTest

"column2" (name; it's actually the last column on the right) is purple on tinderbox-stage.

Note that this is only the tinderbox portion.  To fully implement this, we need to allow for an "exception" status in the appropriate buildbot steps, and make sure TinderboxMailNotifier knows about the exception status.  To do this properly we should upstream the changes to buildbot.