Mitigate flaky test failure about "CRM_Utils_Check_Component_Env->checkVersion()"

[totten]

Overview

The function CRM_Utils_Check_Component_Env->checkVersion() relies on an external data feed. If there's an error fetching feed, then we wind up with a PHP warning. This bubbles up to false-negatives in the test suite. This problem should be tracked in a different way.

Before

This warning can manifest on random pages:

It can also manifest as random test-failures. I recently saw these false-negatives:

CRM_Contact_Page_View_UserDashBoardTest.testDashboardContentContributionsWithInvoicingEnabled
CRM_Contact_Page_View_UserDashBoardTest.testDashboardContentContributions
CRM_Core_Page_HookTest.testFormsCallBuildFormOnce
CRM_Core_Page_HookTest.testPagesCallPageRunOnce

After

The warning is suppressed.

Technical Details

To test this, I used the following to reproduce the problem and observe the mitigation:

diff --git a/CRM/Utils/Check.php b/CRM/Utils/Check.php
index e8eb744ab2..097f36052c 100644
--- a/CRM/Utils/Check.php
+++ b/CRM/Utils/Check.php
@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ class CRM_Utils_Check {
   public function showPeriodicAlerts() {
     if (CRM_Core_Permission::check('administer CiviCRM')) {
       $session = CRM_Core_Session::singleton();
-      if ($session->timer('check_' . __CLASS__, self::CHECK_TIMER)) {
+      if (TRUE || $session->timer('check_' . __CLASS__, self::CHECK_TIMER)) {

         // Best attempt at re-securing folders
         $config = CRM_Core_Config::singleton();
diff --git a/CRM/Utils/VersionCheck.php b/CRM/Utils/VersionCheck.php
index 0b3b9fa460..bc69a65660 100644
--- a/CRM/Utils/VersionCheck.php
+++ b/CRM/Utils/VersionCheck.php
@@ -114,6 +114,7 @@ class CRM_Utils_VersionCheck {
    *     Ex: 'info', 'notice', 'warning', 'critical'.
    */
   public function getVersionMessages() {
+    return NULL;
     return $this->isInfoAvailable ? $this->versionInfo : NULL;
   }

Comments

I'm not usually a fan of suppressing warnings. It is legit to have some QA signals if latest.civicrm.org is unavailable. However, its better to use uptime monitoring for that web-service. It shouldn't manifest in random unit-tests or PHP warnings on random pages.

[civibot]

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