I agree with the comments in this thread. - If we are not re-enabling tests back again or we do not have a plan to re-enable them again, disabling tests only provides us temporary relief until eventually users find issues instead of disabled tests. - I feel similarly about retries. It is reasonable to add retries for reasons we understand. Adding retries to avoid flakes is similar to disabling tests. They might hide real issues.
I think we are missing a way for checking that we are making progress on P1 issues. For example, P0 issues block releases and this obviously results in fixing/triaging/addressing P0 issues at least every 6 weeks. We do not have a similar process for flaky tests. I do not know what would be a good policy. One suggestion is to ping (email/slack) assignees of issues. I recently missed a flaky issue that was assigned to me. A ping like that would have reminded me. And if an assignee cannot help/does not have the time, we can try to find a new assignee. Ahmet On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 11:52 AM Valentyn Tymofieiev <valen...@google.com> wrote: > I think the original discussion[1] on introducing tenacity might answer > that question. > > [1] > https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/16060fd7f4d408857a5e4a2598cc96ebac0f744b65bf4699001350af%40%3Cdev.beam.apache.org%3E > > On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 10:48 AM Rui Wang <ruw...@google.com> wrote: > >> Is there an observation that enabling tenacity improves the >> development experience on Python SDK? E.g. less wait time to get PR pass >> and merged? Or it might be a matter of a right number of retry to align >> with the "flakiness" of a test? >> >> >> -Rui >> >> On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 10:38 AM Valentyn Tymofieiev <valen...@google.com> >> wrote: >> >>> We used tenacity[1] to retry some unit tests for which we understood the >>> nature of flakiness. >>> >>> [1] >>> https://github.com/apache/beam/blob/3b9aae2bcaeb48ab43a77368ae496edc73634c91/sdks/python/apache_beam/runners/portability/fn_api_runner/fn_runner_test.py#L1156 >>> >>> On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 10:25 AM Kenneth Knowles <k...@apache.org> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Didn't we use something like that flaky retry plugin for Python tests >>>> at some point? Adding retries may be preferable to disabling the test. We >>>> need a process to remove the retries ASAP though. As Luke says that is not >>>> so easy to make happen. Having a way to make P1 bugs more visible in an >>>> ongoing way may help. >>>> >>>> Kenn >>>> >>>> On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 8:57 AM Luke Cwik <lc...@google.com> wrote: >>>> >>>>> I don't think I have seen tests that were previously disabled become >>>>> re-enabled. >>>>> >>>>> It seems as though we have about ~60 disabled tests in Java and ~15 in >>>>> Python. Half of the Java ones seem to be in ZetaSQL/SQL due to missing >>>>> features so unrelated to being a flake. >>>>> >>>>> On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 8:49 AM Gleb Kanterov <g...@spotify.com> >>>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> There is something called test-retry-gradle-plugin [1]. It retries >>>>>> tests if they fail, and have different modes to handle flaky tests. Did >>>>>> we >>>>>> ever try or consider using it? >>>>>> >>>>>> [1]: https://github.com/gradle/test-retry-gradle-plugin >>>>>> >>>>>> On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 1:15 PM Gleb Kanterov <g...@spotify.com> >>>>>> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> I agree with what Ahmet is saying. I can share my perspective, >>>>>>> recently I had to retrigger build 6 times due to flaky tests, and each >>>>>>> retrigger took one hour of waiting time. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I've seen examples of automatic tracking of flaky tests, where a >>>>>>> test is considered flaky if both fails and succeeds for the same git >>>>>>> SHA. >>>>>>> Not sure if there is anything we can enable to get this automatically. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> /Gleb >>>>>>> >>>>>>> On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 2:33 AM Ahmet Altay <al...@google.com> >>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I think it will be reasonable to disable/sickbay any flaky test >>>>>>>> that is actively blocking people. Collective cost of flaky tests for >>>>>>>> such a >>>>>>>> large group of contributors is very significant. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Most of these issues are unassigned. IMO, it makes sense to assign >>>>>>>> these issues to the most relevant person (who added the test/who >>>>>>>> generally >>>>>>>> maintains those components). Those people can either fix and re-enable >>>>>>>> the >>>>>>>> tests, or remove them if they no longer provide valuable signals. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Ahmet >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 4:55 PM Kenneth Knowles <k...@apache.org> >>>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> The situation is much worse than that IMO. My experience of the >>>>>>>>> last few days is that a large portion of time went to *just connecting >>>>>>>>> failing runs with the corresponding Jira tickets or filing new ones*. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Summarized on PRs: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> - >>>>>>>>> https://github.com/apache/beam/pull/12272#issuecomment-659050891 >>>>>>>>> - >>>>>>>>> https://github.com/apache/beam/pull/12273#issuecomment-659070317 >>>>>>>>> - >>>>>>>>> https://github.com/apache/beam/pull/12225#issuecomment-656973073 >>>>>>>>> - >>>>>>>>> https://github.com/apache/beam/pull/12225#issuecomment-657743373 >>>>>>>>> - >>>>>>>>> https://github.com/apache/beam/pull/12224#issuecomment-657744481 >>>>>>>>> - >>>>>>>>> https://github.com/apache/beam/pull/12216#issuecomment-657735289 >>>>>>>>> - >>>>>>>>> https://github.com/apache/beam/pull/12216#issuecomment-657780781 >>>>>>>>> - >>>>>>>>> https://github.com/apache/beam/pull/12216#issuecomment-657799415 >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> The tickets: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-10460 >>>>>>>>> SparkPortableExecutionTest >>>>>>>>> - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-10471 >>>>>>>>> CassandraIOTest > testEstimatedSizeBytes >>>>>>>>> - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-10504 >>>>>>>>> ElasticSearchIOTest > testWriteFullAddressing and testWriteWithIndexFn >>>>>>>>> - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-10470 JdbcDriverTest >>>>>>>>> - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-8025 >>>>>>>>> CassandraIOTest > @BeforeClass (classmethod) >>>>>>>>> - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-8454 FnHarnessTest >>>>>>>>> - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-10506 >>>>>>>>> SplunkEventWriterTest >>>>>>>>> - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-10472 direct runner >>>>>>>>> ParDoLifecycleTest >>>>>>>>> - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-9187 >>>>>>>>> DefaultJobBundleFactoryTest >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Here are our P1 test flake bugs: >>>>>>>>> https://issues.apache.org/jira/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20BEAM%20AND%20status%20in%20(Open%2C%20%22In%20Progress%22)%20AND%20resolution%20%3D%20Unresolved%20AND%20labels%20%3D%20flake%20ORDER%20BY%20priority%20DESC%2C%20updated%20DESC >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> It seems quite a few of them are actively hindering people right >>>>>>>>> now. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Kenn >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 4:23 PM Andrew Pilloud < >>>>>>>>> apill...@google.com> wrote: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> We have two test suites that are responsible for a large >>>>>>>>>> percentage of our flaky tests and both have bugs open for about a >>>>>>>>>> year >>>>>>>>>> without being fixed. These suites are ParDoLifecycleTest ( >>>>>>>>>> BEAM-8101 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-8101>) in >>>>>>>>>> Java and BigQueryWriteIntegrationTests in python (py3 BEAM-9484 >>>>>>>>>> <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-9484>, py2 BEAM-9232 >>>>>>>>>> <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-9232>, old duplicate >>>>>>>>>> BEAM-8197 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-8197>). >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> Are there any volunteers to look into these issues? What can we >>>>>>>>>> do to mitigate the flakiness until someone has time to investigate? >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>> Andrew >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>
