New build system problems

[David Holmes]

On 6/03/2013 10:52 AM, Martin Buchholz wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 4:36 PM, David Holmes <david.holmes at oracle.com
> <mailto:david.holmes at oracle.com>> wrote:
>
>
>         I disagree.  The submitter should be responsible for the "right"
>         amount of
>         upfront testing.
>
>
>     Now you are confusing me :) You disagree but say the responsibility
>     is on the submitter. Well I certainly agree with that! Our
>     difference is the notion of "right". I maintain that for a change to
>     the build instructions of a given platform, then a test build on
>     that platform is the absolute minimum upfront testing that must be done.
>
>
> The responsibility is on the submitter to be "responsible".  But there's
> a limit to the certainty of correctness you can expect from the
> submitter.  The integration process (including gatekeepers) needs to
> help out as well.
> If:
> - erroneous commits only cause lost work for the submitter and the
> gatekeeper
> - erroneous commits can be trivially rolled back
> - testing is highly automated
> then we can have a more productive and pleasant developer experience for
> everyone.

None of these premises hold with the current system. You can lament or 
debate that all you like but the facts remain. So in the current system 
it is not acceptable, in my opinion, to push a change that includes 
build instructions for platform X without a build of platform X having 
been tested. So if a submitter can't do that test themselves then they 
need to collaborate with someone who can.

David