Email based retest request process: proposal for new pull/re-apply feature

[zhoumin]

On Mon, Mar 18, 2024 at 3:59PM, Patrick Robb wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 12:06 PM Adam Hassick <ahassick at iol.unh.edu> wrote:
>>
>> I'm not opposed to having the contexts be a key-value pair argument
>> like the others, however that does break backwards compatibility with
>> our existing syntax. If we don't care very much about backwards
>> compatibility, then we could make this change.
>>
>> Instead of having a boolean and a string parameter for whether to
>> rebase and the branch to rebase on, we could have a single argument
>> specifying a branch. Then, labs rebase on the given branch and then
>> rerun all tests if the "rebase=<branch>" argument is present. This
>> would look like:
>>
>> Recheck-request: rebase=main, iol-sample-apps-testing,
>> iol-unit-amd64-testing, iol-broadcom-Performance
> I agree with this approach because it preserves backward
> compatibility, while still providing us with all the functionality we
> need. We will also be able to accept key value arguments in the future
> if further feature requests come in which require it.
>
>> I don't think the context should be required if the request includes
>> the rebase argument, because we do not want to mix valid and invalid
>> test results as Aaron said.
>> This would be a valid format if contexts are optional:
>>
>> Recheck-request: rebase=main
> Okay, I agree that contexts should not be considered by labs when we
> use rebase - but of course we will still store the contexts (if they
> are submitted) alongside the key value args. In the future there may
> be an application for this.
>
> Zhoumin, does this sound acceptable, or do you think there are any
> flaws? If it works, we will implement the updates and try to upstream
> this week. Thanks!

Thanks for your hard work.

I also agree with this approach. The meaning of the key value 
`rebase=main` is sufficient, and loongson lab can support it.

One more thing I want to confirm is whether we should apply the patch 
onto the branch commit which existed at the time when that patch was 
submitted or onto the latest tip of branch if users request doing 
rebase. Users probably request a recheck with `rebase` when the CI lab 
chose a wrong branch onto which apply the patch. I worry we may 
encounter conflicts when apply the patch onto the latest commit of the 
target branch if that branch is just updated before the request.