FTBFS Bug Filing and Handling proposal

[Hans de Goede]

Matt Domsch wrote:
> A proposal for consideration.
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MattDomsch/FTBFS
> 
> Proposal
> 
> This is only a proposal. It will be edited before being approved.
> Feedback requested.
> 
> FTBFS (Fails To Build From Source)
> 
> In the interest of keeping Fedora as a self-hosted distribution
> (meaning you can use Fedora version Z to build Fedora version Z from
> source RPMs), MattDomsch regularly runs a full rebuild of the
> "rawhide" tree, building rawhide with rawhide. This catches a number
> of packages that no longer build, and need developer attention. The
> results of each run are presently mailed to each failing package's
> owner and cc: list (as noted in the package database), and sent to
> fedora-devel-list.
> 
> In the interest of tracking these failures, new bugs for each failing
> package will be filed in Bugzilla. These bugs will all block a blocker
> bug, alias "FTBFS". Included in these bugs will be the root.log and
> build.log from mock. These bugs should start life in a state of
> ASSIGNED, since they are by definition pre-triaged.
> 
> On subsequent runs to the first, a check will be made that there is
> not already a bug that's blocking FTBFS for the package in
> question. If there is, a comment will be made in the existing bug. If
> there's not, a new bug will be filed against the package.
> 
> Challenges
> 
>     * avoiding false positives. It somewhat often happens that a whole
>       class of failures are due to either build system
>       mis-configuration, mirrors being slightly out of sync.
>     * bugs in required packages. If glibc is broken on a particular
>       day, it can affect a large number of package builds. It's most
>       appropriate to file a single bug against glibc in this case
>       rather than many bugs against each package that hit the
>       bug. Unfortunately, figuring this out requires human
>       intervention.
>          1. Being that this is a monthly event, I think that simple
>       sanity checking is really all that's required here - nothing
>       fancy. Rebuild and filing should be two separate phases, so that
>       these issues can be caught. 
> 
> Proposal
> 
>     * File bugs, once for each package.
>     * Block FTBFS
>     * FTBFS blocks Target tracker for next release
>     * attach root.log and build.log from each architecture that has failed.
>     * Fedora version = 'rawhide'
>     * Follow up with public shame on bugs >30 days???
>     * run monthly
>

+1,

One note the public part of the script should check if the already filed 
bug is blocking on some other bug before doing the public shaming.

I've been busy failing my FTBFS packages today and 5 of them fail to 
build due to an ImageMagick bug (which I'm currently hunting down).

Regards,

Hans