this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024

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Bug Fixing (programming.dev)

submitted 10 months ago by JPDev to c/programmer_humor

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[–] CodeMonkey 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

All the time. Causes include:

Test depends on an external system (database, package manager)
Race conditions
Failing the test cleared bad state (test expects test data not to be in the system and clears it when it exits)
Failing test set up unknown prerequisite (Build 2 tests depends on changes in Build 1 but build system built them out of order)
External forces messing with the test runner (test machine going to sleep or running out of resources)

We call those "flaky tests" and only fail a build if a given test cannot pass after 2 retries. (We also flag the test runs for manual review)