Re: [PATCH] travis-ci: run previously failed tests first, then slowest to fastest

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 20, 2016, 20:35 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqfuxs56qb.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <711209F5-E034-459E-8E85-BF8BC32B2E86@gmail.com>

Lars Schneider <larsxschneider@gmail.com> writes:

Show 19 quoted lines

> On 19 Jan 2016, at 21:00, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> IOW, I am confused by the beginning of the log message that says
>> this is taking advantage of "the Travis-CI cache feature".  This
>> improvement looks to me like using the feature of "prove" that
>> allows us to run slower tests first, and does not have much to do
>> with Travis.
>> 
>> You are relying on the assumption that things under $HOME/ is stable
>> while things under t/ (or in our source tree in general) are not,
>> and I think that is a sensible thing to take advantage of, but are
>> we sure that they are running in an environment where "ln -s" would
>> work?  Otherwise, it may be more robust to copy $HOME/.prove to
>> t/.prove before starting to test and then copy it back once the
>> tests are done.
>
> OK, looks like my wording was not ideal. One important thing to know is that 
> $HOME is *not* stable. These TravisCI machines start *always* in a completely 
> clean state.

Ah, that is what I missed. Travis makes everything transient by default (which is a sensible thing to do for CI), but it lets you declare some things are to be made stable, and that is the "cache" feature you are taking advantage of in Travis.

The log message needs to be clarified in a reroll, but thanks for clarifying it for me in advance ;-)

That only leaves one question from me: Is 'ln -s' safe enough? Would copying back and forth make it more robust?

I am guessint the answers are Yes and No, in which case the patch text can (and should) stay as-is.

Thanks.