[PATCH] Solve issues with flapping patches

[Martin Schwenke]

On Fri, 30 Jun 2017 14:15:05 +1200, Andrew Bartlett
<abartlet at samba.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 2017-06-30 at 11:43 +1000, Martin Schwenke via samba-technical
> wrote:
> > * selftest: Mark some samba.drs and samba4.ldap tests as flapping
> > * ctdb-tests: Remove use of pstree to stop unit tests from flapping
> > 
> > Please review and maybe push...
> > 
> > Note that I expect a NACK for the 1st patch from Andrew and a NACK
> > for
> > the 2nd patch from Amitay.  However, at least we might have another
> > useful discussion about flapping tests and which ones are important.  
> 
> Have you see the work currently underway on this?
> 
> This is the result of the lack of DB level locking, which is a serious
> consistency issue that I'm very glad was not swept under the carpet.
> 
> We could waste our time on a discussion about how we came to have no
> read locking on our core user store, or what should have been done to
> respond to the flapping tests earlier, or we could continue to focus
> our efforts on landing the ldb and tdb changes required.

I have vaguely noticed the work but it isn't on my radar.  I need to
get my code and the code it depends on into the tree.  I would like to
do that without having to push 3 or 4 times, every time.

Those samba4.drs and samba4.ldap tests flap like wet towels hanging in a
gentle breeze!  They have topped the list of flapping tests for several
months.  They impede the productivity of team members who care less
about them and care more about the code they're working on.

They should be marked as flapping.  One reason for the existence of
the list of flapping tests is surely to stop irrelevant test failures
from stopping good code/tests getting into the tree.

Any working branch that is trying to fix the flapping can simply revert
the add-to-flapping commit...

Sorry if I'm wrong here.  I can happily live with occasional autobuild
failures... but I find the constant failures very frustrating... 

peace & happiness,
martin