Retention period for autopkgtest test logs

[Steve Langasek]

On Wed, Sep 27, 2023 at 06:38:06PM -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 26, 2023 at 04:53:05PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 03:22:59PM -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > > Moreover, there are other use cases beyond test failure fixing.
> > > Consider MREs and SRUs, where you prepare a package in a PPA, and run
> > > autopkgtest as part of the criteria for having the package be accepted.

> > For the record, I don't believe the SRU team has ever asked for pre-upload
> > autopkgtests as a condition of an MRE.

> That's not correct, there's been at least one recent MRE I'm aware of
> that did this:
>     https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openldap/+bug/2027079

This was a test plan proposed by the Server Team and accepted by the SRU
Team.  The SRU Team did not *ask* for pre-acceptance autopkgtests.

> Tests run against PPAs are processed at a lower default priority than
> the primary archive.

There are no priorities on the queues.  They are handled in round-robin
fashion.  So actually, PPA tests, by virtue of being fewer in number, have a
higher prioritization than tests in the main archive.

> Ultimately, our goal here is to ensure the highest quality of Ubuntu
> possible.  Obviously none of us wish to logjam Britney by pushing it
> beyond its capabilities.  But if that is indeed a risk, wouldn't it be
> better to strengthen Britney rather than weaken our testing processes?

I believe the testing processes described are superfluous in most cases, and
anyway it has been a full-time job to keep ahead of the infrastructure
issues causing autopkgtests to get backlogged, so wishing for more
consistent capacity doesn't really get us anywhere.

> Anyway, this is way more verbose than I intended.  I of course
> understand there's trade-offs and that tech can have weird and
> unexpected limitations.  My original question was just why 8 weeks was
> felt preferrable to a larger number.  If there's a strong reason for
> that, we'll just have to live with it, but to me 26 weeks would seem
> like it'd be long enough to avoid most of the (admittedly outlier)
> issues I could imagine.

Yes; the retention period itself is far less interesting to me than the
reasons why, the former is Just some extra data in swift :)

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                   https://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org
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