cmd/watchflakes: report consistent failures at top

Currently, watchflakes skips consistent failures, including ones
at the top, i.e. failing the latest a few commits. Consistently
failing at tip means builds are broken recently on this builder.
Currently we rely on human watching the dashboard to report such
failures. This CL lets watchflakes to do so. If a new issue is
opened for such failures, the title includes "[consistent failure]"
to increase awareness.

Fixes golang/go#58819.

Change-Id: I2ea89a5d8edee0b9087f03b58e4ff834c03e826d
Reviewed-on: https://go-review.googlesource.com/c/build/+/601439
Reviewed-by: Carlos Amedee <[email protected]>
LUCI-TryBot-Result: Go LUCI <[email protected]>

cmd/watchflakes/luci.go

@@ -108,6 +108,7 @@ type BuildResult struct {
 	StepLogURL   string // textual log of the (last) failed step, if any
 	StepLogText  string
 	Failures     []*Failure
+	Top          bool // whether this is a consistent failure at the top (tip)
 }
 
 type Commit struct {

cmd/watchflakes/main.go

@@ -36,6 +36,8 @@ const timeLimit = 45 * 24 * time.Hour
 
 const maxFailPerBuild = 3
 
+const tooManyToBeFlakes = 4
+
 var (
 	build   = flag.String("build", "", "a particular build ID or URL to analyze (mainly for debugging)")
 	md      = flag.Bool("md", false, "print Markdown output suitable for GitHub issues")
@@ -228,6 +230,20 @@ Repeat:
 			}
 		}
 	}
+	for _, issue := range issues {
+		if issue.Number == 0 && len(issue.Post) >= tooManyToBeFlakes && issue.Post[0].Top {
+			// New issue. Check if it is failing consistently at top.
+			top := 0
+			for _, fp := range issue.Post {
+				if fp.Top {
+					top++
+				}
+			}
+			if top >= tooManyToBeFlakes {
+				issue.Title += " [consistent failure]"
+			}
+		}
+	}
 
 	if query != nil {
 		format := (*FailurePost).Text
@@ -324,13 +340,15 @@ func skipBrokenCommits(boards []*Dashboard) {
 // skipBrokenBuilders identifies builders that were consistently broken
 // (at least tooManyToBeFlakes failures in a row) and then turned ok.
 // It changes those consistent failures to SKIP.
+//
+// It does not skip consistent failures at the top (latest few commits).
+// Instead, it sets Top to true on them.
 func skipBrokenBuilders(boards []*Dashboard) {
-	const tooManyToBeFlakes = 4
-
 	for _, dash := range boards {
 		for _, rs := range dash.Results {
-			bad := 100 // squash failures at the top of the dashboard, which may turn out to be consistent
+			bad := 0
 			badStart := 0
+			top := true
 			skip := func(i int) { // skip the i-th result
 				if rs[i] != nil {
 					fmt.Printf("skip: builder %s was broken at %s (%s %s)\n", rs[i].Builder, shortHash(rs[i].Commit), dash.Repo, dash.GoBranch)
@@ -343,10 +361,24 @@ func skipBrokenBuilders(boards []*Dashboard) {
 				}
 				switch r.Status {
 				case bbpb.Status_SUCCESS:
+					if top && bad < tooManyToBeFlakes {
+						// Skip the run at the top.
+						// Too few to tell if it is flaky or consistent.
+						// It may also get fixed soon.
+						for j := 0; j < i; j++ {
+							skip(j)
+						}
+					}
+					top = false
 					bad = 0
 					continue
 				case bbpb.Status_FAILURE:
 					bad++
+					if top {
+						// Set Top to true, but don't skip.
+						r.Top = true
+						continue
+					}
 				default: // ignore other status
 					continue
 				}
@@ -368,7 +400,7 @@ func skipBrokenBuilders(boards []*Dashboard) {
 			// even if there are just a few of them. Otherwise we get
 			// spurious flakes when there's one bad entry before the
 			// cutoff and lots after the cutoff.
-			if bad > 0 && badStart > 0 {
+			if bad > 0 {
 				for j := badStart; j < len(rs); j++ {
 					skip(j)
 				}