Usability improvements for Firefox automation initiative - Status update #8

NEW:
* Debugging on remote workers is not a main priority for this quarter since it got completed

* We've added investigating hyper chunking

On this update we will look at the progress made in the last two weeks.

This quarter’s main focus is on improving end to end times on Try (Thunder Try project).

For all bugs and priorities you can check out:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/EngineeringProductivity/Projects/Debugging_UX_improvements

Thunder Try - Improve end to end times on try

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Project #1 - Artifact builds on automation

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Tracking bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1284882

Accomplished recently:

• All --artifact build jobs now provide crash-reporter symbols. This means test jobs scheduled against linux64 debug work with --artifact.

Upcoming:

• Patch in review - debug artifact builds on try. (Right now --artifact always results in an opt artifact build.)

Project #2 - S3 Cloud Compiler Cache

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Tracking bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280641

Accomplished recently:

• Green builds on all platforms on Try, planning to compare build times vs. existing Python sccache now

Project #3 - Metrics

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Tracking bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1286856

Accomplished recently:

• Stabilized dashboard http://people.mozilla.org/~klahnakoski/MoBuildbotTimings/End-to-End.html
• TaskCluster ingestion is Mozharness steps is now working, but not shown on charts yet.

Upcoming:

• Still has the “small population” problem, where outliers make the 90th percentile look big.
• Add a TaskCluster view of End-to-End times
• Start knocking off bugs in the dashboard

Project #4 - Build automation improvements

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Nothing new for this edition

Project #5 - Hyper chunking

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Tracking bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1262834

Nothing new for this edition

Project #6 - Run Web platform tests from the source checkout

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Tracking bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1286900

Feature blocked on misconfigured EBS volumes in AWS (bug 1305174)

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This work by Zambrano Gasparnian, Armen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Usability improvements for Firefox automation initiative - Status update #7

On this update we will look at the progress made in the last two weeks.

A reminder that this quarter’s main focus is on:

• Debugging tests on interactive workers (only Linux on TaskCluster)
• Improve end to end times on Try (Thunder Try project)

For all bugs and priorities you can check out the project management page for it:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/EngineeringProductivity/Projects/Debugging_UX_improvements

Status update:

Debugging tests on interactive workers

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Tracking bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1262260

Accomplished recently:

• No new progress

Upcoming:

• Android xpcshell
• Blog/newsgroup post

Thunder Try - Improve end to end times on try

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Project #1 - Artifact builds on automation

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Tracking bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1284882

Accomplished recently:

• The following platforms are now supported: linux, linux64, macosx64, win32, win64
• An option was added to download symbols for our compiled artifacts during the artifact build

Upcoming:

• Debug artifact builds on try. (Right now --artifact always results in an opt artifact build.)
• Android artifact builds on try, thanks to nalexander.

Project #2 - S3 Cloud Compiler Cache

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Tracking bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280641

Some of the issues found last quarter for this project was around NSS which also was in need of replacing. This project was put on hold until the NSS work was completed. We’re going to resume this for Q4.

Project #3 - Metrics

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Tracking bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1286856

Accomplished recently:

• Brittle running example here:  http://people.mozilla.org/~klahnakoski/temp/End-to-End.html
• Problem with low populations; 90th percentile is effectively everything, and a couple of outliers impacts the End-to-End time shown.

Upcoming:

• Figure out what to do with these small populations:
• Ignore them - too small to be statistically significant
• Aggregate them - All the rarely run suites can be pushed into a “Other” category
• Show some other statistic:  Maybe median is better?
• Show median of past day, and 90% for the week:  That can show the longer trend, and short term situation, for better overall feel.

Project #4 - Build automation improvements

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Accomplished recently:

• Bug 1306167 - Updated build machines to use SSD. Linux PGO builds now take half the time

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1306167#c11

Project #5 - Run Web platform tests from the source checkout

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Nothing to add on this edition.

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This work by Zambrano Gasparnian, Armen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.