Flaky spec: Commenting proposals Voting comments Update

[javierm]

What

Tests that fail randomly are called "flakies", this one seems to be one:

Randomized seed: 2812

Travis failed builds:

• Forked repo build 9, job 4
• Build 10373, job 2

Failure:

1) Commenting proposals Voting comments Update
    Failure/Error: expect(page).to have_content "0"
      expected to find text "0" in "I agree 1"
    # ./spec/features/comments/proposals_spec.rb:471:in `block (5 levels) in <top (required)>'
    # ./spec/features/comments/proposals_spec.rb:470:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'
    # ./spec/features/comments/proposals_spec.rb:466:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>' 

How

• Explain why the test is flaky, or under which conditions/scenario it fails randomly
• Explain why your PR fixes it
• Create a backport PR to consul/consul when the fixing PR is approved

Tips for flaky hunting

Random values issues

If the problem comes from randomly generated values, running multiple times a single spec could help you reproduce the failure by running at your command line:

for run in {1..10}
do
  bin/rspec ./spec/features/budgets/investments_spec.rb:256
done

You can also try running a single spec in Travis:
Add option :focus to the spec and push your branch to Github, for example:

scenario 'Show', :focus do

But remember to remove that :focus changes afterwards when submitting your PR changes!

Test order issues

Running specs in the order they failed may discover that the problem is that a previous test sets an state in the test environment that makes our flaky fail/pass. Tests should be independent from the rest.

After executing rspec you can see the seed used, add it as an option to rspec, for example:
bin/rspec --seed 55638 (check Randomized seed value at beginning of issue)

Other things to watch for

• Time related issues (current time, two time or date comparisons with miliseconds/time when its not needed)
• https://semaphoreci.com/community/tutorials/how-to-deal-with-and-eliminate-flaky-tests

Final thoughts

The true objective of this issue is not "to fix" a flaky spec, but to change a spec that randomly fails into one that we can trust when it passes (or fails).

That means you've to think "What are we testing here?" and "Can we test the same thing in another way?" or "Are we already testing this somewhere else at least partially?".

Sometimes the fix is to re-write the entire tests with a different approach, or to extend an existing spec. Tests are sometimes written without taking a look at other tests files neither near scenarios.

[javierm]

I'll have a look at this one. It seems to be similar to the tests fixed by consul#2734, so it should be done quickly.

[javierm]

A similar one failed on forked repo build 12, job 9, and it's also solved by the same pull request:

1) Commenting Probe Options Voting comments Update
     Failure/Error: expect(page).to have_content('0')
       expected to find text "0" in "I agree 1"
     # ./spec/features/custom/probe_option_comments_spec.rb:474:in `block (5 levels) in <top (required)>'
     # ./spec/features/custom/probe_option_comments_spec.rb:473:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'
     # ./spec/features/custom/probe_option_comments_spec.rb:469:in `block (3 levels) in <top (required)>'

[javierm]

Closed via #1606.