Bug#920546: dolfin: flaky autopkgtest as it times out sometimes

[Drew Parsons]

Source: dolfin
Followup-For: Bug #920546

The flaky test has been nasty the last couple of days. Always the C++
MPI demos timing out, each time on a different demo.  The MPI python
demos (usually) run fine.  Presumeably some unresolved race condition.  

2019.1 is now released (currently in experimental), so over time we'll
see if the problem is resolved in the new version or not.

The dolfin tests (even when successful) are shame-listed as "slow
running" by debci, taking about 1:15 hr to complete. The tests are
comprehensive, we could of course run a subset of them if it were
important to run the tests more quickly.  Is there an autopkgtest
option to distingush between "normal" and "slow" tests, so the test
daemon can make its own decision whether to run all of them or not?

I've added C++ unit tests now. They only add a minute or less.  I
don't think the "slow" timing of the tests is related to the C++ MPI
timeouts (the python tests are the slow ones).

So an audit of the tests (when successful):

C++ unit tests (serial):    2 sec
C++ demos (serial):         135 sec = 2.3 min
C++ demos (MPI):            415 sec = 6.9 min  (flaky timeouts)
python unit tests (serial): 1395 sec = 23.3 min
python unit tests (MPI):    622 sec = 10.4 min
python demos (serial):      665 sec = 11 min
python demos (MPI):         634 sec = 10.6 min

total run time = 3868 sec = 65 min = 1 hr 5 min



Audit of flaky timeouts (C++ MPI demos back to March 1 2019):

demo_poisson-disc_mpi
  demo_bcs_mpi
  demo_submesh_mpi
  demo_nonmatching-interpolation_mpi
  demo_auto-adaptive-navier-stokes_mpi
  demo_eigenvalue_mpi
  demo_elasticity_mpi
  demo_elastodynamics_mpi
  demo_singular-poisson_mpi
  demo_sym-dirichlet-bc_mpi
  demo_mixed-poisson_mpi
  demo_spatial-coordinates_mpi
  demo_advection-diffusion_mpi

No obvious pattern.  Not one single repetition in the same demo, each
time the timeout was in a different demo.




-- System Information:
Debian Release: 10.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-5-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled