[llvm-dev] [EXTERNAL] Re: Responsibilities of a buildbot owner

[via llvm-dev]

Stella wrote:
> The few times I’ve made commits to llvm, for example, I’ve always
> gotten at least one email about a break that was unrelated to my
> change (because my changes are perfect, thank you very much). This
> larger problem of build breaks is much harder to address than flaky
> bots or tests, but I think would improve the health of llvm &
> friends significantly more (and in the meantime, we could tolerate
> some “flakiness”).

This is consistent enough that if I don’t get a bot email, I wonder
if my “git push” failed. 😊 The project very much needs a functioning
pre-commit sanity check of some kind.  What we have now is Phabricator
running something that basically always fails, making it largely
useless.  But that is straying from the topic of bot-owner
responsibilities.

On that topic, however, I would like to request a way to actively get
help with a bot failure. A little while ago I tried to commit a patch
to lit, which after a couple of tries, passed everywhere except *one*
test on *one* bot.  I asked for help on llvm-dev and got no reply.
The patch is reverted and remains on a back burner because I couldn’t
get help.  At some point I will try again, but I suspect there won’t
be a way to solve the problem without the active help of the bot owner,
whoever it is.  How do you find a bot owner, anyway?

Thanks,
--paulr