CI builds overview for Project

Recent changes removes CI commits overview from GitLab (this is what is removed: https://gitlab.com/ci/projects/1885) making it difficult to see what is happening with my CI: what builds are waiting to be picked by runner, which one are running or which one finished recently.

Currently build status is shown on Project's Commits page as small icon, but this show the status of Commit (this will also include statuses from Commit Status API). Hiding the status of CI pretty deep.

Having the status only there is not sufficient, because:

1. We see latest commits for specific branch only,
2. We only see a part of picture, we still can't see what is blocking CI,
3. We don't see statuses for commits that were removed from branch by git push,
4. We must look through all branches to see what builds are running.

Reasons why we should have builds pending/running and recently finished overview:

1. As a dev I want to cancel builds that I simply know that are broken.
2. As a dev and a release manager I do care what is building and I do care how long it takes to pick my build.
3. As a release manager I want a way to prioritize builds.
4. I want to see what was recently happening with CI builds, otherwise I think that we loose important piece of information.
5. I have my own runners assigned to my project, I would also like to see what builds were picked by these runners recently.

We have something similar in Admin area that shows All builds, Pending and Running ones. I'm looking to have something similar.

What do you think @dzaporozhets @sytses @vsizov @DouweM?

This is how it looks on Commits page:

I noticed the same thing, and I completely agree with the 5 reasons for having this that you mention, especially reasons 1 and 2.

+1

1. As a dev I want to cancel builds that I simply know that are broken.

I just allow them fail. Makes sense only if it prevents hours of wasting machine resources. Otherwise your time is more valuable.

2. As a dev and a release manager I do care what is building and I do care how long it takes to pick my build.

makes sense

3. As a release manager I want a way to prioritize builds.

builds page did not allow you to change order of builds processing

4. I want to see what was recently happening with CI builds, otherwise I think that we loose important piece of information.

Commits page allow you to see what happening with CI on certain branch which is enough to see when build was broken and when was fixed.

5. I have my own runners assigned to my project, I would also like to see what builds were picked by these runners recently.

I think runner(s) page is more logical place for this.

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Summary: I think it worth implementing separate builds page. We can put it as separate tab on commits page:

Link to #2594 (closed)

I put milestone 8.1 because it should be done as part of #2594 (closed)

Milestone changed to 8.1

@ayufan feel free to implement it after commit status API

Reassigned to @ayufan

@dzaporozhets Do you see place where we could filter the builds to see All, pending and running?

@dzaporozhets I don't think "Builds" fits under "Commits" as well as "Compare", "Branches" and "Tags" do, since it's not about repository data like those other 4 are. Why not add "Builds" to the sidebar, with tabs "All", "Pending" and "Running", and maybe move "Network" to "Commits", since it shows the same kind of information?

I like @DouweM his proposal above to put network under commits and add a builds tap. Alternatively we can keep it as @dzaporozhets proposed but add filters to the builds tab under commits.

I believe Network belongs to graph section - here is an issue https://dev.gitlab.org/gitlab/gitlabhq/issues/2481

according to builds - I am ok putting it in left sidebar.

@dzaporozhets:

I believe Network belongs to graph section

Hmm, I don't know. Of course a network graph is a type of graph, but it's not the same kind of graph as Contributors and Commits, the kind of graph people know from Excel, i.e. pretty data visualization. The Network graph is a way of browsing the repository and more closely related to the lists of branches and tags.

I'll add this to left sidebar.

@dzaporozhets What do you think?

!1593 (merged)

@ayufan good. I left few comments for MR

mentioned in merge request !1733 (merged)

mentioned in commit b9e53258

Status changed to closed