[CI] Add design document for post submit testing (#512)

This patch adds the design document outlining how we plan on
implementing post submit testing for the premerge configuration along
with the motivation and alternatives considered.

Author: boomanaiden154

premerge/post-submit-testing.md

@@ -0,0 +1,203 @@
+# Post Submit Testing
+
+## Introduction
+
+While this infrastructure is focused on premerge testing, it is also important
+to make sure that the specific configuration we are testing is tested post
+commit as well. This document outlines the motivation for the need to test this
+configuration post commit, how we plan on implementing this to ensure we get
+fast feedback scalably, and why we are utilizing this design over others.
+
+## Background/Motivation
+
+LLVM has two types of testing upstream: premerge and postcommit. The premerge
+testing is performed using Github Actions every time a pull request (PR) is
+updated before it is merged. Premerge testing is performed using this
+infrastructure (specifically the `./premerge` folder in llvm-zorg). Landing a PR
+consists of squashing the changes into a single commit and adding that commit to
+the `main` branch in the LLVM monorepo. We care specifically about the state of
+the `main` branch because it is what the community considers to be the canonical
+tree. Currently, commits can also be added to the `main` branch by directly
+pushing to the main branch. Commits pushed directly to `main` are not tested
+through the premerge pipeline as they skip the PR merge process. After a new
+commit lands in the `main` branch, postcommit testing is performed. Most
+postcommit testing is performed through the Buildbot infrastructure. The main
+Buildbot instance for LLVM has a web instance hosted at
+[lab.llvm.org](https://lab.llvm.org/buildbot/#/builders). When a new commit
+lands in `main` the Buildbot instance (sometimes referred to as the Buildbot
+master) will trigger many different builds, base on the configurations
+defined in the llvm-zorg repository under the `buildbot/` folder. These
+configurations are run on Buildbot workers that are hosted by the community.
+Some builders build too slowly to keep up with the pace of commits to `main`,
+so test batches of commits. This often results in a large number of
+erroneous notifications due to the list of possible culprits for a breakage
+being more than a single commit.
+
+For premerge testing, we do not want to notify LLVM developers about failures
+already happening in `main` irrelevant to their changes. This requires knowing
+the state of `main` at the time the premerge testing for a PR was started. We
+also want information on the current state of `main` to empower the community
+with information that they need to revert or forward-fix problematic commits.
+Problematic commits can occur without being caught by the premerge system due to
+someone directly pushing a commit to `main`, or if multiple PRs become
+problematic only when combined. This means we need to test the premerge
+configuration postcommit as well so that we can determine the state of `main`
+(in terms of whether the build passed/failed and what tests failed, if any) at
+any given point in time. We can use this data to implement a "premerge advisor"
+that would prevent sending notifications about build/test failures not caused by
+the changes in a user's PR.
+
+## Design
+
+The LLVM Premerge system has two clusters, namely the central cluster in the
+Google Cloud Platform (GCP) zone `us-central1-a` and the west cluster in the GCP
+zone `us-west1`. We run two clusters in different zones for redundancy so that
+if one fails, we can still run jobs on the other cluster. For postcommit
+testing, we plan on setting up builders attached to the Buildbot master
+described above. We will run one builder on the central cluster and one in the
+west cluster. This ensures the configuration is highly available (able to
+tolerate an entire cluster going down), similar to the premerge testing. The
+builders will be configured to use a script that will launch testing on each
+commit to `main` as if it was being run through the premerge testing pipeline, with some small but significant differences. The post submit
+testing is intended to be close to the premerge configuration. but will be
+different in some key ways. The differences and motivation for them is described
+more thoroughly in the [testing configuration](#testing-configuration) section.
+These builds will be run inside containers that are distributed onto the cluster
+inside kubernetes pods (the fundamental schedulable unit inside kubernetes).
+This allows for kubernetes to handle details like what machine a build should
+run on. Allowing kubernetes to handle these details also enables Google
+Kubernetes Engine (GKE) to autoscale the node pools so we are not paying for
+unneeded capacity. Launching builds inside pods also allows for each builder to
+handle multiple builds at the same time.
+
+In terms of the full flow, any commit (which can be from direct pushes or
+merging pull requests) pushed to the LLVM monorepo will get detected by the
+buildbot master. The Buildbot master will invoke Buildbot workers running on our
+clusters. These Buildbot workers will use custom builders to launch a build
+wrapped in a kubernetes pod and report the results back to the buildbot master.
+When the job is finished, the pod will complete and capacity will be available
+for another build, or if there is nothing left to test GKE will see that there
+is nothing running on one of the nodes and downscale the node pool.
+
+### Annotated Builder
+
+llvm-zorg has multiple types of builders. We plan on using an AnnotatedBuilder.
+AnnotatedBuilders allow for the build to be driven using a custom python script
+rather than directly dictating the shell commands that should be run to perform
+the build. We need the flexibility of the AnnotatedBuilder to deploy jobs on the
+cluster. AnnotatedBuilder based builders also enable deploying changes without
+needing to restart the buildbot master. Without this, we have to wait for an
+administrator of the LLVM buildbot master to restart it before our changes get
+deployed. This could significantly delay updates or responses to incidents,
+especially before the system is fully stable.
+
+### Build Distribution
+
+We want to be able to take advantage of the autoscaling functionality of the new
+cluster to efficiently utilize resources. To do this, we plan on having the
+AnnotatedBuilder script launch builds as kubernetes pods. This allows for
+kubernetes to assign the builds to nodes and also allows autoscaling through the
+same mechanism that Github Actions Runner Controller (ARC) uses to autoscale.
+This enables us to quickly process builds at peak times and not pay for extra
+capacity when commit traffic is quiet, ensuring our resource use is efficient
+while still providing fast feedback.
+
+Using the kubernetes API inside of a python script (our AnnotatedBuilder
+implementation) to launch builds does add some complexity. However, we belive
+the additional complexity is justified as it allows us to achieve our goals
+while maintaining efficient resource usage.
+
+### Testing Configuration
+
+By testing configuration, we mean both the environment that the tests run in,
+and the set of tests that run. The testing configuration will be as close to the
+premerge configuration as possible. We will be running all tests inside the same
+container with the same scripts (the `monolithic-linux.sh` and
+`monolithic-windows.sh` scripts) used by the premerge testing. However, there
+will be one main difference between the premerge and postcommit testing
+configurations. In the postcommit configuration we propose testing all projects
+on every commit rather than only testing the projects that themselves changed or
+had dependencies that changed. We propose this for two main reasons. Firstly,
+Buildbot does not have good support for heterogenous build configurations. This
+means that testing a different set of projects within a single builder depending
+upon the contents of the commit could easily cause problems. More notifications
+could be produced if certain projects (that were only triggered by some files)
+were failing and some were passing which would significantly increase false
+positive notifications. For example, supposed that we have three commits that
+land in `main` and run through postcommit testing: commit A that touches MLIR,
+commit B that touches clang-tidy, and commit C that modifies MLIR. Commit A
+lands, then commit B, then commit C. If commit A introduces MLIR test failures
+into an otherwise clean slate, we would see the following events:
+
+1. Commit A lands. Because it touches MLIR, the buildbot worker runs the MLIR
+   tests. Some of the tests fail. The buildbot "turns red" and a notification is
+   sent out to the PR author.
+2. Commit B lands. Since it touches clang-tidy, the buildbot worker runs the
+   clang-tidy tests. All of the tests pass. The buildbot "turns green". No
+   notifications are sent out since everything is passing.
+3. Commit C lands. Since it touches MLIR, the buildbot workers runs the MLIR
+   tests. The problem introduced in commit A still exists, so some tests fail.
+   No new tests fail. Since the buildbot was previously green due to the
+   interspersed clang-tidy commit, a notification is still sent out to the
+   author of commit C.
+
+By running the tests for all projects in every postsubmit test run, we avoid
+the problematic situation described above.
+
+Another reason for running all the tests in every postsubmit run: When running
+premerge tests on a PR, we also explicitly do not test certain projects even
+though their dependencies change. While we do this because we suspect
+interactions resulting in test failures would be quite rare, it is possible, and
+having a postcommit configuration catch these rare failures would be useful.
+
+### Data Storage
+
+The hosted Buildbot master instance at [lab.llvm.org](https://lab.llvm.org)
+contains results for all recent postcommit runs. We plan on querying the results
+from the buildbot master because they are already available and that is where
+they will natively be reported after the infrastructure is set up. Buildbot
+supports a [REST API](https://docs.buildbot.net/latest/developer/rest.html) that
+would allow for easily querying the state of a commit in `main`.
+
+In the future, we may implement a "premerge advisor" that tells the user what
+tests/build failures they can safely ignore, we need to know what is currently
+failing on `main`. Each pull request is tested as if it was merged into main,
+which means the commit underneath the PR is very recent. If a premerge run
+fails, the premerge advisor will find the commit from `main` the PR is being
+tested on. It will then query the Buildbot master using the REST API for the
+status of that commit, or the preceeding commits if testing for the requested
+commit has not yet completed. It can then report the appropriate status to the
+user. Having the status will let the premerge advisor avoid pestering LLVM
+developers with failures unrelated to their changes.
+
+## Alternatives Considered
+
+Originally, we were looking at running postcommit testing through Github
+Actions, like the premerge tests. This is primarily due to it being easy to
+implement (a single line change in the Github Actions workflow config) and also
+easy to integrate with the Github API for implementation of the premerge testing
+advisor. More detailed motivation for the doing postcommit testing directly
+through Github is available in the
+[discourse RFC thread](https://discourse.llvm.org/t/rfc-running-premerge-postcommit-through-github-actions/86124)
+where we proposed doing this. We eventually decided against implementation in
+this way for a couple of reasons:
+
+1. Nonstandard - The standard postcommit testing infrastructure for LLVM is
+   through Buildbot. Doing postcommit testing for the premerge configuration
+   through Github would represent a significant departure from this. This means
+   we are leaving behind some common infrastructure and are also forcing a new
+   unfamiliar postcommit interface on LLVM contributors.
+2. Notifications - This is the biggest issue. Github currently gives very little
+   control over the notifications that are sent out when the build fails or gets
+   cancelled. This is specifically a problem with Github sending out
+   notifications for build failures even if the previous build has failed. This
+   can easily create a lot of warning fatigue which is something we are putting
+   a lot of effort in to avoid. We want the premerge system to be perceived as
+   reliable, have people trust its results, and most importantly, have people
+   pay attention to failures when they do occur. They are significantly more
+   likely to pay attention when they are the author of the patch getting the
+   notification and the feedback is actionable.
+3. Customization - Buildbot can be customized around issues like notifications
+   whereas Github cannot. Github is not particularly responsive on feature
+   requests and their notification story has been poor for a while, so their
+   lack of customization is a strategic risk.