Regressions getting more common

[Matt Rice]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2020 at 5:06 PM Luis Machado via Gdb <gdb@sourceware.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I don't know about other non-x86 architectures, but over the past year
> I've been noticing more and more regressions being introduced,
> unnoticed, for ARM/AArch64. This is not good and causes a lot of pain if
> you have to keep tracking things manually, like we do now.
>
> The buildbots worked great for this very purpose, but Sergio has moved
> on to other duties (thanks for all the work!) and can't maintain it
> anymore. The builders are still there though, sitting mostly idle.
> We have a beefy ARM/AArch64 builder, which I can maintain for others to use.
>
> We can do better than to declare things OK after a single round of tests
> under x86, which has been the trend unfortunately.
>
> The subject of better CI has come up multiple times on IRC, with sad
> memories of the gerrit experiment's demise. Now we're left with review
> by e-mail and no broad testing.
>

Speaking of gerrit, I noticed that the server side git hooks, used by
https://git-repo.info/
for its repo -upload/git pull-request functionality has landed in git master,
and is slated to be in the next git release...

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git/commit/?id=6c430a647cb990fc856d328733fa59e1fafadb97

Which seems like an interesting new approach for this stuff.

> I think we need to discuss better validation pre-commit and possible CI
> solutions for GDB. It is pretty easy to exercise x86, but it doesn't
> sound fair to other architectures to have to keep cleaning up after
> things that have only been validated on that architecture.
>
> It would be great to establish a roadmap so we can get GDB's testing to
> today's standards, and maybe revisit the use of more modern patch review
> tools while at it.
>
> What do you think?