[U-Boot] livetime of boards

[Andreas Bießmann]

Hello Heiko,

On 11/07/2013 11:39 AM, Heiko Schocher wrote:
> Am 07.11.2013 10:37, schrieb Andreas Bießmann:
>> On 11/07/2013 09:17 AM, Heiko Schocher wrote:
>>> Am 06.11.2013 08:50, schrieb Wolfgang Denk:
>>>> In message<20131105203736.GM5925 at bill-the-cat>   you wrote:

<snip>

>>> But you are right, that approach leads in a lot of conflicting
>>> patches ... but I think, we just pooled board information in boards.cfg,
>>> so this would be the right place in my eyes ...
>>>
>>> Maybe we get such Information "a Boards is tested with current mainline"
>>> inform of an EMail with an Text "Board xy tested with commit mm. Please
>>> update livetime" ... and we can add a script, which updates the
>>> livetime for this board, so we can prevent conflicting patches ... ?
>>
>> I agree here with Tom. Beside the possibility of conflicting pahces I
>> see another problem here.
>> We will get a lot of patches just for increasing the tested counter for
>> a single board. These patches needs to be handled in some way. If we
>> shift to some integrated system (gerrit comes to mind) this could be
>> easier than today, but it will bind resources anyways.
>> Therefore I think it is a bad idea to save a such often changing
>> information in the source code repository.
> 
> I see this info just changing once when releasing a new U-Boot version.

The saved information how often a board was runtime tested with the
correct SHA1 of the u-boot/master could be quite useful.
In the end just the last tested commit will be interesting but it could
give some information how often that specific board is used. The
information must not be generated by a board maintainer ... the
maintainer could then see if he needs to pull out a board or if one else
run the test before.

If we would save this in the repository we do not have this information
in time.
If we send the information to a list we need to parse it or use some
other tool to provide the information.
Beside that we will pollute the list with status updates about boards
being tested. It could be hard to find real patches in that information
flood then.

<snip mail proposal>

> So (in current case Tom) should, before releasing a new U-Boot
> version, first call this script "collect_livetime_info" and he get:
> 
> -> one livetime counter patch for current release
> -> one list for boards which reach end of life
> -> one list for boards, which should be deleted

Good idea, but the information could also be saved on a website or in
another database.
It should be easily filled by the tester and also easily queried by
wherever is interested in.

> All Infos are "release info" I think, and fully fit in the commit
> for the new release ...

I also think that should be done on release only.

> ... maybe "deleting boards" can be done automatically, but this is
> not a trivial job ...

I think deleting should be done in next release then to give the board
maintainer some time to check the boards. On a new release the board
maintainer should be mailed that in the next release the board will be
removed. We should also store this somewhere in the code (status in
boards.cfg?).

Next question is what to do if the mail bounces ;)

> So, with such a solution, I see no big additional cost for adding
> such a feature (except the task "deleting old boards", which is maybe
> not trivial)
> 
> Do not understand me wrong, if we find another solution, I am
> happy also ... just spinning around ...

Me too.

<snip>

>>> If we decide to delete older boards after n release cycles without
>>> testreports, we must not decide nor look in a database. We are
>>> sure, we have only "good and working" boards ... and we just
>>> do the necessary work for new features ... and we are sure, that
>>> we get back testreports within n release cycles ...
>>>
>>> So let us decide first, if we want to go this way ...
>>
>> Yes, we should introduce some mechanism to check when a specific board
>> was last runtime tested. But I fear the overhead with patches that
>> update a tested counter.
> 
> I thought with "decide": Do we want to delete "old boards"?
> With this, we do not need a "MAKEALL --check-boards -s at91" when
> we introduce new features, as all boards in mainline are in a well
> tested shape ...
> 
> Ok, two decisions:
> 
> - Do we want to collect board testinginformation?

I think we should do that i none way or another.

> - Do we want to delete old boards automatically after we do not get
>   some test reports after a time intervall?

And we should delete 'unmaintained' boards, when is to be discussed. I'm
currently fiddling with at91 gpio and ask myself if I should adopt all
the boards or just let them fail ...

Best regards

Andreas Bießmann