Re: Buildfarm TAP testing is useless as currently implemented

On 07/27/2015 10:06 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> I challenge anybody to figure out what happened here:
> http://buildfarm.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/show_log.pl?nm=hornet&dt=2015-07-27%2010%3A25%3A17
> or here:
> http://buildfarm.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/show_log.pl?nm=hamster&dt=2015-07-04%2016%3A00%3A23
> or here:
> http://buildfarm.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/show_log.pl?nm=crake&dt=2015-07-07%2016%3A35%3A06
>
> With no visibility of pg_ctl's output, and no copy of the postmaster log,
> there is no chance of debugging intermittent failures like this one.
> This isn't entirely the buildfarm's fault --- AFAICS, prove-based testing
> has inadequate error reporting by design. If "not ok" isn't enough
> information for you, tough beans. (It might help if the farm script
> captured the postmaster log after a failure, but that would do nothing
> for prove's unwillingness to pass through client-side messages.)
>
> I think we should disable TAP testing in the buildfarm until there is
> some credible form of error reporting for it. I've grown tired of
> looking into buildfarm failure reports only to meet a dead end.
> Aside from the wasted investigation time, which admittedly isn't huge,
> there's an opportunity cost in that subsequent test steps didn't get run.

Well, it does create a lot of files that we don't pick up. An example
list is show below, and I am attaching their contents in a single
gzipped attachment. However, these are in the wrong location. This was a
vpath build and yet these tmp_check directories are all created in the
source tree. Let's fix that and then I'll set about having the buildfarm
collect them. That should get us further down the track.

cheers

andrew

/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/pg_controldata/tmp_check/log/regress_log_001_pg_controldata
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/pg_basebackup/tmp_check/log/regress_log_020_pg_receivexlog
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/pg_basebackup/tmp_check/log/regress_log_010_pg_basebackup
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/pg_rewind/regress_log
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/pg_rewind/tmp_check/log/regress_log_003_extrafiles
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/pg_rewind/tmp_check/log/regress_log_001_basic
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/pg_rewind/tmp_check/log/regress_log_002_databases
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/scripts/tmp_check/log/regress_log_100_vacuumdb
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/scripts/tmp_check/log/regress_log_091_reindexdb_all
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/scripts/tmp_check/log/regress_log_050_dropdb
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/scripts/tmp_check/log/regress_log_070_dropuser
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/scripts/tmp_check/log/regress_log_020_createdb
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/scripts/tmp_check/log/regress_log_102_vacuumdb_stages
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/scripts/tmp_check/log/regress_log_030_createlang
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/scripts/tmp_check/log/regress_log_060_droplang
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/scripts/tmp_check/log/regress_log_040_createuser
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/scripts/tmp_check/log/regress_log_010_clusterdb
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/scripts/tmp_check/log/regress_log_011_clusterdb_all
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/scripts/tmp_check/log/regress_log_101_vacuumdb_all
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/scripts/tmp_check/log/regress_log_090_reindexdb
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/scripts/tmp_check/log/regress_log_080_pg_isready
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/pg_config/tmp_check/log/regress_log_001_pg_config
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/pg_ctl/tmp_check/log/regress_log_001_start_stop
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/pg_ctl/tmp_check/log/regress_log_002_status
/home/andrew/pgl/pg_head/src/bin/initdb/tmp_check/log/regress_log_001_initdb