"Ping-pong" builds store excessively large CauseAction

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      Create two jobs, a and b, each of which does nothing but trigger the other. (Useless by itself, but a similar idiom can be used to alternate indefinitely between two actions, such as checking for changes in some part of the environment and reacting to those changes.)

      Let this run for a few dozen iterations. The build.xml file for each build can soon run into multiple megabytes. For example, on just the fourth cycle, a/builds/4/build.xml has this lengthy "cause" section:

      <hudson.model.CauseAction>
  <causes>
    <hudson.model.Cause_-UpstreamCause>
      <upstreamProject>b</upstreamProject>
      <upstreamUrl>job/b/</upstreamUrl>
      <upstreamBuild>3</upstreamBuild>
      <upstreamCauses>
        <hudson.model.Cause_-UpstreamCause>
          <upstreamProject>a</upstreamProject>
          <upstreamUrl>job/a/</upstreamUrl>
          <upstreamBuild>3</upstreamBuild>
          <upstreamCauses>
            <hudson.model.Cause_-UpstreamCause>
              <upstreamProject>b</upstreamProject>
              <upstreamUrl>job/b/</upstreamUrl>
              <upstreamBuild>2</upstreamBuild>
              <upstreamCauses>
                <hudson.model.Cause_-UpstreamCause>
                  <upstreamProject>a</upstreamProject>
                  <upstreamUrl>job/a/</upstreamUrl>
                  <upstreamBuild>2</upstreamBuild>
                  <upstreamCauses>
                    <hudson.model.Cause_-UpstreamCause>
                      <upstreamProject>b</upstreamProject>
                      <upstreamUrl>job/b/</upstreamUrl>
                      <upstreamBuild>1</upstreamBuild>
                      <upstreamCauses>
                        <hudson.model.Cause_-UpstreamCause>
                          <upstreamProject>a</upstreamProject>
                          <upstreamUrl>job/a/</upstreamUrl>
                          <upstreamBuild>1</upstreamBuild>
                          <upstreamCauses>
                            <hudson.model.Cause_-UserIdCause/>
                          </upstreamCauses>
                        </hudson.model.Cause_-UpstreamCause>
                      </upstreamCauses>
                    </hudson.model.Cause_-UpstreamCause>
                  </upstreamCauses>
                </hudson.model.Cause_-UpstreamCause>
              </upstreamCauses>
            </hudson.model.Cause_-UpstreamCause>
          </upstreamCauses>
        </hudson.model.Cause_-UpstreamCause>
      </upstreamCauses>
    </hudson.model.Cause_-UpstreamCause>
  </causes>
</hudson.model.CauseAction>

      Excessive disk usage consumption is not the only problem; Jenkins may even refuse to start, since loading one of these files can produce a stack overflow:

      hudson.util.RobustReflectionConverter.unmarshal(RobustReflectionConverter.java:180) 
hudson.util.XStream2$PassthruConverter.unmarshal(XStream2.java:323) 
hudson.util.XStream2$AssociatedConverterImpl.unmarshal(XStream2.java:293) 
com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.TreeUnmarshaller.convert(TreeUnmarshaller.java:82) 
com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.AbstractReferenceUnmarshaller.convert(AbstractReferenceUnmarshaller.java:63) 
com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.TreeUnmarshaller.convertAnother(TreeUnmarshaller.java:76) 
com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.TreeUnmarshaller.convertAnother(TreeUnmarshaller.java:60) 
com.thoughtworks.xstream.converters.collections.AbstractCollectionConverter.readItem(AbstractCollectionConverter.java:71) 
hudson.util.RobustCollectionConverter.populateCollection(RobustCollectionConverter.java:85) 
com.thoughtworks.xstream.converters.collections.CollectionConverter.unmarshal(CollectionConverter.java:61) 
hudson.util.RobustCollectionConverter.unmarshal(RobustCollectionConverter.java:76) 
com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.TreeUnmarshaller.convert(TreeUnmarshaller.java:82) 
com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.AbstractReferenceUnmarshaller.convert(AbstractReferenceUnmarshaller.java:63) 
com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.TreeUnmarshaller.convertAnother(TreeUnmarshaller.java:76) 
com.thoughtworks.xstream.core.TreeUnmarshaller.convertAnother(TreeUnmarshaller.java:60) 
hudson.util.RobustReflectionConverter.unmarshalField(RobustReflectionConverter.java:290) 
hudson.util.RobustReflectionConverter.doUnmarshal(RobustReflectionConverter.java:233) 
hudson.util.RobustReflectionConverter.unmarshal(RobustReflectionConverter.java:180)

      While recording transitive causes may be useful in general, there must be some sanity cutoff point.

            Assignee:
            Jesse Glick
            Reporter:
            Jesse Glick
            Archiver:
            Jenkins Service Account

              Created:
              Updated:
              Resolved:
              Archived: