Keep the doorbell listening between callers, and stop a hung test taking CI with it
ci / build and test (push) Successful in 2m58s
ci / android head (push) Successful in 3m56s
ci / api image (push) Successful in 22s
ci / desktop nightly (push) Successful in 1m47s

The test step ran for twenty minutes and had to be stopped by hand. Eighteen suites
had passed; DodoSSH.Client.App.Tests never reported.

◆ ON UNIX, A FRESH SERVER PER CONNECTION LOSES THE NEXT ONE.

The doorbell's accept loop built a NamedPipeServerStream inside the loop, served one
caller and disposed it. That is fine on Windows and quietly wrong on Linux, where a
named pipe is a Unix domain socket: disposing the server closes the *listening*
socket and unlinks its path, so a second launch that connected while the first was
being served has its connection dropped. Its Connect returned, its write succeeded
into a buffer, and nobody ever read it — the launch was told it had rung the
doorbell and the window never came forward.

Reproduced in a container rather than reasoned about, because the two platforms
disagree and this machine is only one of them. Three rings back to back:

    one instance, Disconnect between callers   ->  3 of 3 answered
    a fresh instance per connection            ->  1 of 3 answered

So there is one server for the life of the doorbell now, Disconnect()ed between
conversations, and the socket is never not listening. Which makes leaveOpen on the
reader load-bearing too: a StreamReader disposes the stream it was given, and that
stream now has to survive into the next iteration.

Two things I had wrong about this, both worth recording. Cancelling
WaitForConnectionAsync *does* unblock a pending accept on Linux — that was my first
theory and the container disproved it, so DisposeAsync awaiting the loop was never
the problem. And the app itself never hung: the lost ring is a launch that is
ignored, not a process that stops.

◆ AND THE REASON IT COST TWENTY MINUTES RATHER THAN TWENTY SECONDS.

    await twice.Task.WaitAsync(TestContext.Current.CancellationToken);

That token carries no timeout. A ring that never arrives is then not a failing test,
it is a job that sits there — which is exactly what happened, and it is the more
expensive of the two mistakes because it turns any future bug of this shape into a
runner somebody has to go and stop. Both awaits are bounded now.

TheDoorbellAnswersMoreThanOnce keeps its shape deliberately: two rings back to back
rather than one and a pause, because the gap between accepts is the whole defect. A
test that waited for the first to be answered would pass against the broken version.

ci.yml had no timeout-minutes anywhere, on any job. Every job has a ceiling now, and
the test step has a tighter one of its own — ten minutes against a suite that takes
two — because a hang there is the likeliest of the lot and a step-level timeout names
the step instead of leaving a reader to work out which of fifteen was still running.
None of them is a performance budget; a build that legitimately grows past one should
have the number raised.

Verified both ways on Linux, in a container, against the committed tree and this one:

    31c836f  SingleInstanceTests  ->  hung in TheDoorbellAnswersMoreThanOnce,
                                      still going when killed at 3 minutes
    this     SingleInstanceTests  ->  7 of 7 in 1.3s
    this     the whole suite      ->  570 tests, 0 failed, 88s

And on Windows, where none of this was ever broken: 570 tests, 0 failed.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
laurensandClaude Opus 5 committed 2026-08-26 15:42:41 +02:00
1 parent 31c836f6ca
commit dabc691c35
3 files changed
+116 -27

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+23
View File
@@ -29,6 +29,18 @@ jobs:
build:
name: build and test
runs-on: [linux]
# ◆ A CEILING, BECAUSE THIS FILE HAD NONE AND A HUNG TEST RAN UNTIL SOMEBODY NOTICED.
#
# One test in DodoSSH.Client.App.Tests waited on a named pipe that, on Linux, nothing was ever going
# to answer — and it waited on a token with no timeout, so the job did not fail, it sat there. It was
# killed by hand after twenty minutes, having reported nothing but the eighteen suites that had
# already passed.
#
# Twenty-five minutes against a job that ordinarily takes three. It is not a performance budget and
# must not be read as one: a build that legitimately grows past this should have the number raised.
# What it buys is that the failure mode is a red job with a named step rather than a runner somebody
# has to go and stop.
timeout-minutes: 25
steps:
# act_runner runs every `uses:` action with node inside the job container, and this
# runner's image has none — the run died on the first line of actions/checkout with
@@ -220,7 +232,12 @@ jobs:
- name: build
run: dotnet build DodoSSH.slnx --no-restore --configuration Release
# Tighter than the job's own ceiling, and deliberately so: a hang here is the likeliest of the
# lot — it is the only step running code written for this repository rather than a tool — and a
# step-level timeout names the step in the failure instead of leaving a reader to work out which
# of fifteen was still running. Ten minutes against a suite that takes two.
- name: test
timeout-minutes: 10
run: dotnet test DodoSSH.slnx --no-build --configuration Release
# The one build shape nothing else here exercises: a self-contained RID-specific publish. Its
@@ -556,6 +573,8 @@ jobs:
exit 0
android:
name: android head
# See the build job. The docker pull and the toolchain image make this one legitimately slower.
timeout-minutes: 40
runs-on: [linux]
# Writes the nightly release at the end of the job; see that step for what the capability is and why
# it is acceptable here and nowhere else. Job-scoped, so nothing else in this file gains it.
@@ -929,6 +948,8 @@ jobs:
desktop:
name: desktop nightly
# See the build job. Two publishes, a pack and an upload of about 120 MB.
timeout-minutes: 40
# Gated on the tests, like the image job and for a stronger version of its reason: this one is
# installed by people and replaces itself afterwards. Nothing anybody runs should come out of a
# commit whose suite was red.
@@ -1297,6 +1318,8 @@ jobs:
image:
name: api image
# See the build job. A cold layer cache is the slow case here.
timeout-minutes: 40
# Gated on the tests rather than parallel with them, which costs a few minutes of wall
# clock on every main commit and buys the thing worth having: no image reaches the
# registry from a commit whose tests were red. An image is not a build artefact anyone