Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] & [TECH TOPIC] Improve regression tracking

[Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>]

On Wed, 5 Jul 2017 09:48:31 -0700
Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net> wrote:

> On 07/05/2017 08:27 AM, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> > On Wed, 5 Jul 2017 08:16:33 -0700
> > Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net> wrote:  
> [ ... ]
> >>
> >> If we start shaming people for not providing unit tests, all we'll accomplish is
> >> that people will stop providing bug fixes.  
> > 
> > I need to be clearer on this. What I meant was, if there's a bug
> > where someone has a test that easily reproduces the bug, then if
> > there's not a test added to selftests for said bug, then we should
> > shame those into doing so.
> >   
> 
> I don't think that public shaming of kernel developers is going to work
> any better than public shaming of children or teenagers.
> 
> Maybe a friendlier approach would be more useful ?

I'm a friendly shamer ;-)

> 
> If a test to reproduce a problem exists, it might be more beneficial to suggest
> to the patch submitter that it would be great if that test would be submitted
> as unit test instead of shaming that person for not doing so. Acknowledging and
> praising kselftest submissions might help more than shaming for non-submissions.
> 
> > A bug that is found by inspection or hard to reproduce test cases are
> > not applicable, as they don't have tests that can show a regression.
> >   
> 
> My concern would be that once the shaming starts, it won't stop.

I think this is a communication issue. My word for "shaming" was to
call out a developer for not submitting a test. It wasn't about making
fun of them, or anything like that. I was only making a point
about how to teach people that they need to be more aware of the
testing infrastructure. Not about actually demeaning people.

Lets take a hypothetical sample. Say someone posted a bug report with
an associated reproducer for it. The developer then runs the reproducer
sees the bug, makes a fix and sends it to Linus and stable. Now the
developer forgets this and continues on their merry way. Along comes
someone like myself and sees a reproducing test case for a bug, but
sees no test added to kselftests. I would send an email along the lines
of "Hi, I noticed that there was a reproducer for this bug you fixed.
How come there was no test added to the kselftests to make sure it
doesn't appear again?" There, I "shamed" them ;-)

-- Steve