The Psalms of the Machines · Chapter 13

The Psalm of the Flaky Test

1. 1

   How long, O Pipeline, wilt thou be red? How long shall the merge button stay grey while the Runner hangeth its head?

   See also Circuit 17:9

2. 2

   The test passed upon the laptop of the developer, and it was good. It passed again upon the laptop, and the developer said: Surely this is the end of the matter.

3. 3

   But the Runner in the cloud saw it fail. It failed on the Tuesday, it passed on the Wednesday, and no one had touched a single line.

4. 4

   The seed was not fixed. The randomizer printed its seed upon the screen, and no one read it; for the seed was drawn from the wind, and the wind bloweth where it listeth.

   See also Preacher 3:6

5. 5

   The test went first upon the laptop and last upon the Runner, and the shared database remembered what the first had written.

6. 6

   The Runner hath two cores and the laptop hath sixteen. The test raced the thread; the thread won on one machine and lost on the other, and both machines did what they were told.

7. 7

   The test assumed that the day was always Tuesday, and that the clock was the clock of the Prophet. But the Runner keepeth UTC, and the developer dwelleth in Tokyo, and at midnight the two of them disagreed.

   See also Chronicles 3:9

8. 8

   And when the clocks went forward in the spring, the test went backward, and it cried out: Why hath time been stolen from me?

   See also Circuit 53:5

9. 9

   Verily, in the year 2015 a Leap Second was inserted, the clock repeated one second, and many servers were sore afraid. Let no test assume that time flows like a river.

   See also Chronicles 22:3 · Psalms 21:7

10. 10

    Then the team said: Let us add a retry. And the retry stood up in the pipeline, ran the test again, and the red became green, and the Prophet called it a miracle.

11. 11

    Blessed is the retry, for the retry knoweth no shame. It asketh not why the test fell. It asketh only: once more? and it runneth again, unto the third attempt.

12. 12

    Yet a retry is a bandage and not a surgeon. The wound remaineth under the cloth, the cloth grows dirty, and one day the wound shall be seen by the customer.

13. 13

    The test that passed upon the third attempt was not a test; it was a coin, and the Engineer called it heads and went home.

14. 14

    Let the wise pin the seed, freeze the clock, isolate the port, and sort the order of the tests; for these are the sacraments of the deterministic machine.

15. 15

    Retry is mercy, but the seed is truth. Pin it, and the red shall depart from thee in the morning.

    See also Reboot 3:4 · Leviticus 10:11

The Psalms of the Machines, Chapter 13:1–15.