# Julia CI, how to help

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-ci-how-to-help/102865>\
**Category:** Internals & Design\
**Created:** [August 16, 2023, 3:05pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-ci-how-to-help/102865 "2023-08-16T15:05:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![frylock](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/frylock/32/50213_2.png) [@frylock](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/frylock)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2023, 3:05pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-ci-how-to-help/102865/1 "2023-08-16T15:05:16Z")

</div>

I broke this question out so as to not clutter [this thread](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/making-the-review-process-more-pleasant-for-new-contributors/102604/11). In there, @Lilith mentions how new folk can help with Julia’s CI. I have _no_ experience with CI, but would like to learn.

The steps detailed, in my poor understanding, started with locating a failing test on [this page](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/commits/master) … i.e. look for a red x. I picked one near the top of the page at that instant of time, which winds up being 883c19b. When I click on the red x, I get a drop-down window with a few fails …

I scroll around a little bit and I find a test [that fails on line 302](https://buildkite.com/julialang/julia-master/builds/26757#0189f4c7-4a71-470c-b403-0aa11e924e3f) of [binaryplatforms.jl](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/test/binaryplatforms.jl#L302C49-L302C49). I then did a cursory search in the issues page for things mentioning `detect_libgfortran_version` and found nothing.

Would I then open up an issue suggesting that this test be skipped or broken?

EDIT: is this even the right place to post this question?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Lilith](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/lilith/32/27492_2.png) [@Lilith](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Lilith)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2023, 4:42pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-ci-how-to-help/102865/2 "2023-08-16T16:42:52Z")

</div>

> [@frylock](#):
>
> EDIT: is this even the right place to post this question?

Yes, and thank you for your interest!

Our CI has several steps, with failures possible at many points. Commit 883c19b had failures in  
in the “Build”, "Test, and “Allow Fail” groups. Failures anywhere except for the “Allow Fail” group cause CI to fail and the little red x to appear next to the commit. Failures in the “Allow Fail” group, as the name implies, are acceptable and even expected.

 ![Screenshot 2023-08-16 at 11.31.39 AM](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/7/3/7322f116aba00793d0568bcfbf016b8afd934752.png)

Build failures are tricky—you can’t just skip a step in the build and expect the next step to work. Allow fail failures are fine to have linger around and should typically be fixed by fixing the underlying bug that causes the tests to fail (in this case, the problem is presumably that `detect_libgfortran_version` fails to detect libgfortran, and the solution is to fix that so it works on that platform).

You found a failure in an “allow fail” group, look for one in the “test” group. The “Test” failures are what we can and should skip to avoid CI failing.

 ![Screenshot 2023-08-16 at 11.38.15 AM](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/f/d/fd5bfe8d61dc51dc4bc7e7e9896b0c79ebef003b.png)

> [@frylock](#):
>
> Would I then open up an issue suggesting that this test be skipped or broken?

You would open an issue saying that the underlying issue should be fixed (the long term solution is to fix the bugs) and open a pull request skipping the test (we want CI to be green even in the presence of known bugs)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![frylock](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/frylock/32/50213_2.png) [@frylock](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/frylock)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2023, 4:45pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-ci-how-to-help/102865/3 "2023-08-16T16:45:45Z")

</div>

Thanks for the comprehensive response!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![gbaraldi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/gbaraldi/32/22101_2.png) [@gbaraldi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/gbaraldi)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2023, 5:30pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-ci-how-to-help/102865/4 "2023-08-16T17:30:02Z")

</div>

There is also a bi-weekly meeting on mondays, if you want to participate just ask for details in the #ci-dev channel in the julia slack