Build Queues

[raphaeltm]

This ties in with https://github.com/defang-io/defang/issues/169 to some extent. With most systems I've come across with build queues, you can see historical data about how builds went, but you also get information about queued builds:

• if they're in the same project/org you might see other queued builds
• if they're not, you might see a number of builds ahead of yours
• systems like GitLab sometimes give you information about build runners

Essentially, given that the build queue and build runner status determine how fast my build becomes available, I want to be able to have a sense of what's going on there.

The DX could be as simple as:

defang cd status

and then getting:

4 builds currently in queue

Or it could be more like my proposal in the other issue and provide something like:

etag	service	status	started	completed	build time
6238gf782	ui	queued	-	-	-
328hf0j0	api	queued	-	-	-
fjd8s038	ui	in progress	2024-03-06T20:50:40Z	-	2m32s
792h39jfds	ui	failed	2024-03-06T19:50:40Z	2024-03-06T19:54:40Z	4m0s
792h39jfds	api	complete	2024-03-06T19:50:40Z	2024-03-06T19:52:45Z	2m5s

[raphaeltm]

Just had a moment where I thought logs or something else might be broken because there was no visibility into the build queue as an end user.

I think this is actually a pretty high priority for DX in playground, especially for the current set of users we're building for. Something to say "don't worry, the logs are empty because there's a couple things happening before your build, it's not an issue with your code/config." Right now it's easy to wonder if, as a user, you did something wrong, or if something is broken on Defang's end.

I think the CD service scaling will help, but I don't think it fully solves it. I also don't know how common an issue it will be, but when it happens, it's something I would classify as "worrying" from the user's perspective.