Subject: Re: bug#41668: Failing test: gui-installed-desktop-os-encrypted

From: Mathieu Othacehe <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2020 10:47:42 +0200

Hey Ludo,

> How did you do it in the example above?  Perhaps we can have a local
> hack specifically in the installer (otherwise we’d find ourselves
> duplicating syslog-related logic there.)

I used a custom re-implementation of "invoke/quiet" printing every line
on the syslog port. Maybe, we could enable such a mechanism only during
the tests.

> I don’t have good ideas for (1), although I think the speedups induced
> by the new image API might help.

Yes, that's for sure making the debug more comfortable!

> As for (2), I think it’s kind of a problem of CI in general, connected
> with the fact that we’re all somewhat busy building stuff rather than
> waiting for CI notifications to act on.  :-)
>
> That’s my impression, but I’d really like to hear from people with
> experience in CI and/or the system tests.

Totally agree. When submitting patches to Linux for instance, the CI is
able to reply to the patch mail, and warn about any failures. An other
difference is that patches are often kept in the maintainer 'staging'
branches until the CI is over.

I don't know if Guix is a big enough project to appoint some maintainers
that would periodically merge their branches to 'master' or if it would
just be a huge burden. Something we need to discuss in the future maybe.

> Perfect, thanks!

Anyway, thanks for your fast review :)

Mathieu