[Gluster-devel] Performance Translators' Stability and Usefulness - Regression test outline

[Gordan Bobic]

On 07/07/2009 19:38, Mickey Mazarick wrote:

> Since I'm running my setup as a storage farm it just doesn't matter to
> me if there's a memory leak of if a server daemon crashes, I have cron
> jobs that restart it and I barely take notice.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. That sounds like a monumental bodge. If somebody 
working for me implemented that kind of a "solution" for a frequently 
occuring problem in a production environment, they'd be finding 
themselves looking for a new job pretty quickly. Most likely along with 
the architect who trialed the solution before putting it into production 
without finding the problems that require such a solution. Solution to 
crashing processes is fixing the bug that causes them to crash, not a 
wrapper that gets them restarted.

> True a regression testing
> would get rid of the memory leak you hate but if they have to start from
> the ground up I would rather encourage the dev team to add hotadd
> upgrade and hotadd features. These things would keep my cluster going
> even if there were catastrophic problems.

The _LAST_ thing Gluster needs at the moment is more features. Lack of 
stability loses you customers much faster than extra features gain them.

> What I'm saying is that a good top down testing system is something we
> can discuss here, spec out and perhaps create independently of the
> development team. I think what most people want is a more stable product
> and I think a top down approach will get it there faster than trying to
> implement a given UT system from the bottom up. It will defiantly answer
> the question "should I upgrade to this release?"

IMO, a top down approach merely glazes over the more fundamental 
problems. You cannot engineer quality from the top down. You design from 
top down, but quality comes from bottom up.

Gordan