[RFC] Quarantine lifecycle timelines and tracking requirements

[Daniel Hiller]

Hey folks,                                                  

I've opened a PR to add explicit lifecycle timelines and tracking requirements to our test quarantine process: https://github.com/kubevirt/kubevirt/pull/17633

Why?

Our quarantine process currently defines clear entry and exit criteria, but has no deadlines between them. In practice this means quarantined tests can — and do — remain quarantined indefinitely, sometimes for over a year. Without a fixed timeline or tracking requirements, no mechanism ensures that quarantined tests are actively being worked on.

Thus Quarantine becomes a permanent escape hatch rather than a temporary safety valve.

The goal is straightforward: every quarantined test should either be fixed or deleted within a bounded timeframe. This keeps SIGs accountable and prevents the quarantine list from growing unbounded.                                                                                                                                     

The PR only changes docs/quarantine.md — no code or CI changes. I'd appreciate feedback on whether the proposed timelines do work.

Later I will follow up on how the transition for existing quarantined tests should work; I still need to think about that.

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Kind regards,

Daniel Hiller

He / Him / His

Principal Software Engineer, KubeVirt CI, OpenShift Virtualization

Red Hat

dhi...@redhat.com   

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