Re: Don't run Salsa CI in vain - a disabled CI is better than a persistently failing one

Timo Röhling <[email protected]> Sat, 4 Jul 2026 21:25:18 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.general
Organization	The Debian Project
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Hi,

* Otto Kekäläinen <[email protected]> [2026-06-29 13:27]:
>If developers are not quick to fix or disable failing jobs, they will 
>develop "alert fatigue" and stop caring when the CI is red. The longer 
>it remains red, the less likely it is to ever turn green again.

I find it really frustrating to see my CI turn red only to realize that 
it's just a random pipeline failure such as [1]. IMHO, these false 
alarms attribute to much more "alert fatigue" than your implied 
unwillingness of maintainers to keep their packages in good shape;
especially if said packages build just fine on the buildds and pass the 
autopkgtests on debci.

I know not all causes of these intermittent CI failures are easily 
fixable (runners are a scarce resource, for example), and the last thing 
I want to do is lay blame at the volunteers who put in a lot of work to 
improve and further develop the CI pipeline. I do expect the same 
courtesy the other way around, though.


Cheers
Timo

[1] https://salsa.debian.org/cmake-team/cmake/-/pipelines/1080037


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