RFR: 7903580: Allow for re-attempting agent creation when an attempt fails [v7]

[Jonathan Gibbons]

On Thu, 7 Dec 2023 14:21:46 GMT, Jaikiran Pai <jpai at openjdk.org> wrote:

>> Can I please get a review of this change which proposes to implement the enhancement request noted in https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/CODETOOLS-7903580?
>> 
>> Several times in our CI instances we have noticed that a test (action) fails because it is unable to create an `Agent` instance due to the socket connection not being established between the `AgentServer` and the `ServerSocket` running within the jtreg process. This causes the test itself to fail with `Error. Cannot get VM for test: java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Accept timed out`. It has also been noticed that most of the times this is intermittent and subsequent attempt for a different test (action) passes. 
>> 
>> The proposed change here introduces a new configuration parameter `--agent-attempts` under "Agent Pool Options", which allows for configuring the maximum number of attempts that are allowed for getting an agent for an action. This is an optional parameter and by default it has been set to a value of `2`, which by default then allows the agent creation to be retried once if the previous attempt fails. This then means that existing installations/usages of jtreg need not set a value for `--agent-attempts` to enroll for this feature. A value of `1` for this parameter implies that the agent creation attempt will be done only once, which is what currently happens in the absence of this proposed feature.
>> 
>> Inability to obtain an agent, for whatever reason, after attempting `--agent-attempts` times continues to result in test (action) failure, like it does today.
>> 
>> Some additional minor logging related changes have been done too, to help debugging some of the current observed failures.
>> 
>> This change has been tested in the following manners:
>> 
>> 1. This modified build of jtreg has been used to run tier1, tier2 and tier3 of JDK mainline and it has been verified that nothing regresses with this change. That however doesn't mean that agent creation re-attempt logic was tested in these runs (since the first attempt never failed).
>> 2. Locally this build was jtreg was additionally modified to selectively not connect to the `ServerSocket`'s port thus simulating a "Accept timed out" exception. That change then verified that the re-attempt logic does indeed correctly kick in and the test action passes after picking up the newly created agent.
>> 3. `--agent-attempts 1` was passed to the above modified build (from step 2) to verify that the re-attempt isn't attempted when `--agent-attempts 1` an...
>
> Jaikiran Pai has updated the pull request incrementally with one additional commit since the last revision:
> 
>   address review comments in faq

Nice.

The FAQ entry is a nice addition, to explain the typical reason that launching an agent might fail, and so why it is reasonable to have a retry count.

src/share/doc/javatest/regtest/faq.md line 714:

> 712: This default behaviour can be overridden by passing the `--agent-attempts` option
> 713: to `jtreg` command. This option takes an integer value which represents the number
> 714: of attempts JTReg is allowed to make when attempting to get a agent for a test

(minor) remove `JTReg is allowed` so that it reads "the number of attempts to make..."

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Marked as reviewed by jjg (Lead).

PR Review: https://git.openjdk.org/jtreg/pull/173#pullrequestreview-1833936131
PR Review Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jtreg/pull/173#discussion_r1459975845