[Buildroot] [RFC] support/misc/gitlab-ci.yml.in: retry a job only if it failed due to a runner issue

[Romain Naour]

Each time a new pipeline is trigged, some jobs may fail due to temporary
issue with a Gitlab runner (network, power supply, docker or maintainance).

Most of the problems are "runner system failure" [1] and requires to retart
each failed jobs manually by maintainers to complete the pipeline with only
real failure if any.

The "retry" keyword allows to configure how many time a job is retried if
it fails. "retry:when" allows to retry a failed job only on specific
failure types like "runner_system_failure".

While at it, retry a job if it failed due to a timeout failure (this
timeout means that the job was pending for more than 24h) [2].

Such timeout failure occurs on pipeline testing each Buildroot's defconfig
since there is not enough gitlab runner avaible to build all of them
within 24h.

Retry only jobs that are more likely to wait for a runner
(generate-gitlab-ci-yml, runtime_test_base, defconfig_base and test_pkg).

[1] https://gitlab.com/buildroot.org/buildroot/-/jobs/4936949397 (runner system failure)
[2] https://gitlab.com/buildroot.org/buildroot/-/jobs/4936949530 (timeout failure or the job got stuck)

https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/yaml/#retrywhen

Signed-off-by: Romain Naour <romain.naour at gmail.com>
Cc: Arnout Vandecappelle <arnout at mind.be>
---
 .gitlab-ci.yml                |  5 +++++
 support/misc/gitlab-ci.yml.in | 15 +++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 20 insertions(+)

diff --git a/.gitlab-ci.yml b/.gitlab-ci.yml
index ed17bb14b9..3d7719568f 100644
--- a/.gitlab-ci.yml
+++ b/.gitlab-ci.yml
@@ -10,6 +10,11 @@ stages:
 generate-gitlab-ci-yml:
   stage: generate-gitlab-ci
   script: ./support/scripts/generate-gitlab-ci-yml support/misc/gitlab-ci.yml.in > generated-gitlab-ci.yml
+  retry:
+    max: 2
+    when:
+      - runner_system_failure
+      - stuck_or_timeout_failure
   artifacts:
     when: always
     paths:
diff --git a/support/misc/gitlab-ci.yml.in b/support/misc/gitlab-ci.yml.in
index 446132846f..4d9acbc3d3 100644
--- a/support/misc/gitlab-ci.yml.in
+++ b/support/misc/gitlab-ci.yml.in
@@ -67,6 +67,11 @@ before_script:
                 tail -200 runtime-test.log
                 exit 1
             }
+    retry:
+        max: 2
+        when:
+            - runner_system_failure
+            - stuck_or_timeout_failure
     artifacts:
         when: always
         expire_in: 2 weeks
@@ -99,6 +104,11 @@ before_script:
         - TEST_CASE_NAME=${CI_JOB_NAME}
         - echo "Starting runtime test ${TEST_CASE_NAME}"
         - ./support/testing/run-tests -o test-output/ -d test-dl/ -k --timeout-multiplier 10 ${TEST_CASE_NAME}
+    retry:
+        max: 2
+        when:
+            - runner_system_failure
+            - stuck_or_timeout_failure
     artifacts:
         when: always
         expire_in: 2 weeks
@@ -119,6 +129,11 @@ before_script:
     needs:
         - pipeline: $PARENT_PIPELINE_ID
           job: generate-gitlab-ci-yml
+    retry:
+        max: 2
+        when:
+            - runner_system_failure
+            - stuck_or_timeout_failure
     artifacts:
         when: always
         expire_in: 2 weeks
-- 
2.41.0