QA/Bibisect

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Einführung

Bibsect steht für "binary bisect" oder "binäres Teilen". Dieser Prozess hilft Tatsachenzu identifizieren, die Verschlimmerungen verursachen. Verschlimmerungen sind ein lästiges Artefakt, das unglücklicherweise mit Softwareentwicklung und QA einhergeht. Wir wollen Verschlimmerungen schnell bearbeiten, bevor zuviel Zeit vergeht und sie schwerer und schwerer zu sichten und zu beheben sind.

Wie funktioniert Bibisecting?

Jedes Bibsect Paket ist ein blödes Verzeichnis voll mit hunderten oder tausenden Versionen von LibreOffice. Dem Verzeichnis in chronologischer Reihenfolge hinzugefügt bieten die Versionen eine schnelle und einfache Möglichkeit für uns, den Fehler gegen viele unterschiedliche Versionen zu testen, ohne LibreOffice jedes Mal neu als eine andere Version übersetzen zu müssen.

Wir können die Tools zur binären Suche durch Übergabe in die Box hebeln (z. Bsp. git bisect) sowie als Nutzen aus der Kompression und Deduplizieren der Funktionen in Git. Z. Bsp. in einer Reihe von Übersetzungen, die jede 500 MB Festplattenplatz benötigt, können wir durch Deduplizierung möglicherweise nur 25 MB je zusätzlicher Übersetzung benötigen.

Schau Effective Bisection and Bibisection (Matthew Francis's Vortrag auf der LibOCon 2015 auf YouTube) an sowohl zur Einführung als auch für praktische Einzelheiten.

Details

Eine erfolgreiche Bibisection lässt Entwickler nur ein paar Aufgaben durchsuchen, um den Schuldigen für einen Fehler zu ermitteln. QA kann den zusätzlichen Schritt zu einer vollständigen Bibisection machen (um den exakten Treffer zu machen) oder kann das den Entwicklern überlassen. Es ist oft einfach, den Fehler zu finden nach der bibisection des bugs.

Nach ungefähr 10 Anläufen hast Du hunderte von Übersetzungen, um damit zu arbeiten. Ein Bibisect kann weniger als 15 Minuten dauern.

Aktuell ist bibisecten möglich unter:

As can be seen from the Commits in range and Number of builds, depending upon the particular bibisect repository, this range might be on average 80 commits for old "43max" repository (reaching hundreds of source commits in some builds) to just 1 or 2 commits for newer repositories. (We also have some very 'coarse' bibisect repositories that use released versions + beta + RC builds, and these may have ranges spanning multiple hundreds of commits).

If build commit or range is found, bug is marked with keyword "bibisected", and if source commit is found, bug is additionally marked "bisected".

allgemeine Anweisungen

It might be a good idea for beginners to start by tracing the steps of a bibisect that was already completed successfully. For this purpose we have a bibisecting tutorial.

Anmerkung:
Each operating system is different, so please read the page that corresponds to your specific operating system (GNU/Linux, macOS or Windows) for more specific instructions, tips and troubleshooting.

Before bibisecting for the first time, you need to:

Set up your environment (possibly with extra software)
Download the relevant bibisect repository

Once set up, for each bug:

Bibisect the bug
Comment in the bug report with the results
Replace the keyword 'bibisectRequest' with 'bibisected'
If the precise commit causing the regression has been identified, also add the keyword 'bisected', add the developer as CC, and comment 'Adding Cc: to <developer's name>'

Note that you should only add the original author to the CC ("author" on git.libreoffice.org, or "owner" on gerrit), not any reviewers. If a developer has retired from the project (check the date of their last commits), there is no point in adding anyone to the CC. Rather in this case, you should bump the priority of the bug report.

Commit ranges

Some bibisect repositories have ranges of source commits folded into a single chunk. If after completing a bibisect you are presented with only a single one of these chunk commits, you can get the range by first copying the hash (note: not the source hash) and using it in a git log command like so:

git log c3f9dc54188b316a61dd871b63734d49b05f5d7f

Now you can copy the source hashes of the first and previous displayed commits and separate them with .. to construct a range query like so:

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/log/7c4d3ea6ba4d42b4dda5148a00c8c411b5d7703d..5b195fbcf7a441aeb193f6abd08b877e580938e0

This will allow you to skim commit messages looking for related subjects. For deeper scrutiny, see the section on detective work.

die erste betroffene Version herausfinden

If you have a local copy of the core repository, you can update the Version field in the bug report thanks to some git commands:

1. First, make sure you have all the tags:

git fetch --tag

2. Then, use `name-rev` to find the context (more precisely, by how many revisions it preceded the earliest tag that contains the commit):

git name-rev <commit>

3. If that didn't give a useful tag that matches a LibreOffice version, you can list all tags that contain the commit and have "libreoffice" in the name with:

git tag --contains <commit> | grep libreoffice

Begrenzungen

Performing a bibisect is only possible if we have a repository available for the correct OS, covering the correct range of LibreOffice commits. We have very good coverage on GNU/Linux, and are improving our coverage on Windows and macOS.

Some regressions are difficult to reproduce, and may require multiple test runs for a bug to appear. As you may imagine, trying to bibisect such regressions is very difficult, and requires one to perform many test runs after each checkout of a new version of LibreOffice to give some security / statistics that the bug is indeed present or not present with the given version.

We do not currently have bibisect support for

LibreOffice for Android
BSDs (although the GNU/Linux bibisect packages may run, with minor tweaks)
LibreOffice Online
LibreOffice Vanilla for Mac (in the Mac App Store)

Versionen

Versions are listed on each OS page. See #Details above.

nicht bibisectierbar

Some bugs are not bibisectable. These include

Bugs that don't show up on a supported platform (see #Limitations)
Bugs that predate our bibisect builds (We're working on extending the range covered)
Bugs that depend upon build options not enabled in the TDF builds (e.g. -kde)

If a bug with bibisectRequest Keyword is found to be not bibisectable, leave a comment on the bug explaining why we're not able to use bibisect to track down the introduction of this problem, and replace Keyword bibisectRequest with notBibisectable. If a bug predates bibisect builds, replace Keyword bibisectRequest with preBibisect.

Fehler finden

Finding bugs needing bibisect

The following bugs with keyword bibisectRequest are waiting for a bibisect:

In addition all unresolved regressions in LibreOffice might benefit from bibisecting.

Finding bugs already bibisected

For the links to bugzilla queries, please see here.

With the above info added to the bug a developer knows that the regression was introduced between the commits fb754a0df859e30255c25af8fa19bfaa75f257e7 (good) and 2d19e9bb07ccff3134f855812dddfda5c07b1fe4 (bad) on master.

git log fb754a0df859e30255c25af8fa19bfaa75f257e7..2d19e9bb07ccff3134f855812dddfda5c07b1fe4

The above command ran in the source repository will show the 128 commits including the one that introduced the bug, making it a lot easier for the developer to close in on the culprit. For more details, see:

Spezielle Situationen

Bibisecting language-specific bugs

The TDF bibisect repositories provided do not include any lang-packs.

To bibisect bugs which work good with english UI, but bad with non-english UI (like CJKs): one should copy-paste the following files, from a release build which has your language, to the same location of the bibisect repo:

program/resource/<your_lang_tag>
share/registry/Langpack-<your_lang_tag>.xcd
share/registry/res/fcfg_langpack_<your_lang_tag>.xcd
share/registry/res/registry_<your_lang_tag>.xcd

The suggested language resources you should copy is the one for the same major branch. For example, for the bibisect-linux-64-6.0 repo, you can copy from 6.0.1.1 release.

Running with a separate user profile

To create separate profile directory in /tmp/ (which will be automatically removed during the next machine boot):

./opt/program/soffice -env:UserInstallation=file:///tmp/soffice-bisect

If you want to start fresh for each bisect iteration, you can add git commit hash to directory name. For example:

./opt/program/soffice \
-env:UserInstallation=file:///tmp/soffice-bisect-$(git rev-parse HEAD)

Finding a fix

Sometimes a bug is a collateral damage of another (possibly minor) bug, in a non obvious way. In such cases that other bug might be fixed on master, but was not backported to the release branch. To identify a problem-fixing commit you can use:

git bisect start --term-new=fixed --term-old=unfixed
git bisect fixed master
git bisect unfixed <some-old-sha> # you can use "git log --reverse" to detect the first revision in the bibisected package

As you test, say

git bisect fixed

or

git bisect unfixed

as appropriate.

If the fix is small and important enough, it likely can be easily backported to the release branch.

Checking out a specific commit based on source hash

Sometimes you already know a specific source commit has/does not have the bug you are hunting.

Copy the source hash from the LibreOffice git history and use it to grep in the bibisect repo log like so:

git log --all --grep='29a9f433c268414747d8ec7343fc2b5987971738'

Copy the commit hash of the bibisect repo and do a checkout for it to verify your assumption:

git checkout 38758b70f5278d4d8292a2e857e80a9a1130f38e

You can use the repo commit hash when determining the bad-good range to bisect:

git bisect start 38758b70f5278d4d8292a2e857e80a9a1130f38e oldest

Doing detective work inside a commit range

In case your bibisect result is a range of commits and you have trouble locating the offending commit, you might make your life easier by searching with a keyword.

An example for a case, where we know the problem is in Calc's Navigator view:

git log --stat --pretty=short --graph 169bd7718264b0e312052757f9bbd2321e1399c2...ff8b873936aa72b17309da4bfc2775573a5b1f55 | grep -B 10 -A 10 --color=always "sc/source/ui/navipi" | less -R

Adjust the -B and -A grep parameters to control how many lines before and after the hit you want to display. When piping to less, -R preserves the colouring of search results.

Bisect skip hell

Sometimes we get stuck in a miserable situation, where we have to use git bisect skip over and over again due to various reasons. There are ways of getting out of these infuriating messes and here we will show one of them.

Example bug: tdf#123095

Bug appeared in 4.0-4.1 range.

There are lots of commits, where the autofilter is not shown at all, so have to skip those.

We can use git bisect visualize to show us the remaining suspected commits:

git bisect visualize --oneline > /some/path/bisect-viz-123095.txt

The earliest bad results are at the top while the ones you have skipped are at the bottom. The commit below the bottom is the last known good one.

The top results included

  b842ac1 source-hash-7b4d76772ef76a8de852ed647ed0cad368f70189
  40ef04e source-hash-dc173b7f2a550185404aacbc6da744cb6d1880fc
  8e697de source-hash-eb96e4325278f31b9e6fbc1d5c6a01543204ded6

Doing git checkout b842ac1, test, continue with the next etc. it turns out the third one from the top was already a skippable commit.

A range query with the source hashes in the style bottomcommit..firstbadcommit can be made.

Searching for "filter" in the displayed results leads to a suspicious commit about sorting autofilter popup items.

If soffice is failing with a non-zero exit code - this probably means a crash - a solution under QA/Bibisect/Automation#Tidbits for efficiency offers a script to ease the pain of repeatedly skipping failed probes.

Especially in the older repositories, sometimes you can end up with a list of dozens of potential bad commits. The commits might not be in order, so it is not easy to construct a range query. You can save the list of commits to a text file and run git show for all of them, directing the output to a file:

while IFS="" read -r p || [ -n "$p" ]
do
  git show --no-patch "$p" >> /path/to/bisectlog.txt
done < /path/to/bisect_range.txt

The older repositories include the original commit message, so this resulting log file will be immediately useful. If the binary repository doesn't include the original messages, you have to first do a pass with git show --oneline --no-patch, tidy up the list of source hashes and then do the final looping against LibreOffice core repository.

Finding source commits from bibisect

If bibisect was done, but not likely to be correct or in a repository known to have large range of source commits, we can check the range by finding a previous build commit from the found one and then find the source range.

$ git log -1 1f14665c5624bc7a502738aa8f4f2bd70a211e72^
$ git log --oneline b6c016da23d309b4ac7d154bc33a22397974ed73..d85fd8a85501547d5bb87822d2589a07aed7f2d6

Troubleshooting

Please add your problems and how you solved them. This section covers issues that affect more than one OS. For OS-specific issues, please see the individual OS wiki pages.

Unable to extract files

If you can't extract files (you should get an error message). Try to rename the file from *.tar.lzma to *.tar.xz.

Installed LibreOffice became modified unexpectedly

Problem / Messages:

   error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by checkout:
     opt/program/pythonloader.pyc
     opt/program/uno.pyc
     opt/program/unohelper.pyc
   Please, commit your changes or stash them before you can switch branches.
   Aborting

Solutions:

git checkout .

The above command will repair the problem. Afterwards you can start the next test run as usual with

git bisect good # or git bisect bad

If that does not solve the problem, you can try the following commands:

git clean -fd
git reset --hard

The ultimate repair is to delete everything except one hidden .git/ folder, and do

git checkout oldest

Unable to start soffice

Problem 1: Upon trying to run soffice within bibisect you receive the error "unexpected operator terminate called after throwing an instance of 'com::sun::star::uno::DeploymentException'

Solution: Reset your libreoffice profile located in ~/.config/libreoffice. Make sure to backup the folder if you have any settings you'd like to preserve for use with your stable libreoffice release. After you're done with bibisect you can try to return your backed up profile to it's original location (ie. delete the new profile folder and replace it with the backed up one)

Problem 2: Trying to run soffice within bibisect gives frequent errors such as "Application Error" and skipping via 'git bisect skip' is tedious.

Solution: Run a one-line script to skip commits on errors. The script will stop when soffice is successfully run and then you proceed with 'git bisect good' or 'git bisect bad'. If the error is repeated, the script can be run again.

while (git clean -f -X && git bisect skip && ! instdir/program/soffice); do : ; done

A version for PowerShell on Windows, additionally showing how to give arguments to soffice:

Do {
    git clean -f -X && git bisect skip
    $proc = Start-Process -PassThru -FilePath .\instdir\program\soffice -ArgumentList "--norestore C:\path\to\file.odt"
    Wait-Process -InputObject $proc
} until ($proc.ExitCode -eq 0)

Note that if the bug involves crashing, you have to get out of the skipping loop by quitting LibreOffice normally before testing.

How to bisect RTL bugs

In case you need to bisect a RTL ( Right-To-Left ) bug, please import this variable before calling LibreOffice:

SAL_RTL_ENABLED=1

How to bisect File Recovery bugs

In case you need to bisect File Recovery bugs ( e.g. tdf#129210 ), comment out line OOO_DISABLE_RECOVERY=1 in file instdir/program/ooenv

You may also use user control:

soffice --norestore file-that-recovers.ext

How to bisect file hanging / CPU or memory exhaustion bugs

In case you need to bisect file hanging/memory exhaustion bugs, you may limit memory or CPU or time execution.

In Linux, timeout utility can be used. To avoid confusion with built-in "timeout" command, here it's renamed to "tmt".

For example, if LibreOffice 'good' commit opens a file with 1 GB of memory, you may set soffice memory limit to 1.500.000 kilobytes to avoid 'bad' commit hanging your computer.

tmt -m 1500000 instdir/program/soffice

Or, to limit CPU+SYS time (where normal time is seen with successful run):

tmt -t 20 instdir/program/soffice

More advanced option is to use benchexec utility. User needs to be added to the appropriate group (benchexec). Runexec can be used to execute a single command while measuring its resource consumption, similarly to the tool "time" but with more reliable time measurements and with measurement of memory usage.

In Windows, process-governor utility can be used.

Weitere Informationen

Automation

See the separate article on automating bisecting.

Anmerkungen

Für Einzelheiten, wie bibisect Archive angelegt sind:

QA/Bibisect/Implementation