It starts innocently enough. You write a plugin, maybe for your favorite development tool or framework, and you’re genuinely excited. You’ve implemented new features, squashed a few known bugs, and polished the interface. You open a pull request and watch as your continuous integration (CI) system picks up the changes.

And then… failure.

At first, you shrug it off. Probably just a test environment glitch… you tell yourself. But as the number of failed runs ticks upward — five, then ten, then fifteen — a creeping sense of dread replaces that initial optimism. You are officially strapped into the emotional rollercoaster of debugging one of the most persistent CI pipelines in recent memory.

The Early Stages: Confidence Meets Reality

The cycle starts with confidence. After all, you’ve written code plenty of times before. You have linting turned on, your editor is showing green across the board, and locally, the plugin runs like a dream. You push to your branch and head to get coffee, assuming that by the time you return, it will have passed.

But what greets you instead is that glaring red badge of shame:

❌ CI failed — 1 check failing

Okay. No problem. You open the logs. A single test failed. It seems so trivial — maybe a flaky test? You rerun and it fails again. You tweak a setting — still fails. And suddenly, you realize… this might take a while.

Denial and Frustration: The CI Abyss

This is where the rollercoaster dips. The failures start stacking up. Most errors are vague:

  • “Timeout exceeded while waiting for element.”
  • “Expected true but found false.”
  • “Dependencies not found.”

Each fix leads to a new error. Now you’re playing whack-a-mole with bugs. You double-check environment variables, restructure the plugin directory, mock external services, and still… nothing. Every time you push a commit, your anticipation builds — and every failure feels more personal.

During this phase, emotions range from stubborn denial (“the test suite must be broken, not my code!”) to mounting frustration (“how can the same build pass locally but fail in CI?”).

Obsession: The Debugging Deep Dive

By this point, you’ve committed yourself. You’re not just trying to pass CI. You’re confronting the very soul of your code. You start keeping a log file. Lines like:

Attempt #17 - Removed unnecessary import
Attempt #18 - Changed timeout from 5s to 10s
Attempt #19 - Added explicit wait for service start

You’ve now learned more about your project’s dependencies than you ever planned to. Nested inside Docker configurations, misaligned compiler flags, weird caching issues — these aren’t just errors, they’re riddles waiting to be solved.

This phase is often accompanied by:

  • Late-night stackoverflow browsing (sometimes in languages you don’t speak).
  • Verbose logging levels set to 200%.
  • Commenting in forums or GitHub issues with the intensity of an archaeologist uncovering truths long buried.

You’re not debugging anymore — you’re on a quest.

The Breakthrough: Step by Step

And then, something changes. Maybe on attempt #23, you finally isolate a race condition between two modules. On #25, you realize one of the tests is assuming a different file system structure. And on attempt #27, after rigorous tweaks and a fresh container image, you push once more…

…and it passes.

✅ All checks have passed merging can be performed automatically

Your heart skips a beat. You reread the message three times to be sure it’s real. You refresh the browser. The green checks remain. It’s really over.

Euphoria: The Peak of the Ride

You feel… invincible. You resisted the darkness. You trusted your process. You conquered CI. In this triumphant moment, you understand two timeless truths:

  1. There’s no better high than a persistent test finally turning green.
  2. Never underestimate the joy of deleting your debugging prints.

The office Slack channel lights up with confetti emojis. Your co-contributors cheer you on, maybe teasing you a bit for how long it took — but they understand. CI victorious is a rite of passage. By surviving it, you’ve entered a new tier of developer maturity.

Reflection: Lessons Learned the Hard Way

After the adrenaline wears off, you begin the postmortem. How did it take 27 builds? More importantly, how can the next person avoid this pain?

The CI victory becomes an educational chapter in your project’s history. You write documentation. You pin dependencies. You make your tests more deterministic. You even automate parts of the setup that once seemed impossible to control.

You’ve learned about more than just coding during this odyssey. You’ve learned:

  • The value of patience and persistence.
  • The difference between environment-related and code-related errors.
  • The critical importance of clean, descriptive CI logging.

Most of all, you’ve learned to respect the CI system — not as an annoyance, but as a partner. It catches what you miss, even if it does so with brutal indifference.

Tips for Surviving the CI Rollercoaster

If you find yourself where so many developers have stood before you, here are some survival strategies:

  • Master the Logs: Treat CI logs like sacred texts. Read them thoroughly, even when they’re long.
  • Recreate Locally: Rebuild your full CI environment locally using containers or build scripts. Parity helps pinpoint issues faster.
  • Push Strategically: Avoid pushing blind guesses. Review, test, and plan before triggering another build.
  • Use Feature Flags: Don’t let one failing feature hold your whole PR hostage. Disable it and focus on what’s greenable.

And finally — take breaks. Debugging CI issues can devolve into rabbit holes. Sometimes stepping away leads to that flash of clarity.

The Epilogue: Pride and Paranoia

Even after the build passes, a small paranoid part of you stays cautious. Maybe you check it again the next day. Maybe you refresh it one more time before merging. CI has scarred you — but it has also transformed you.

From now on, you treat .yml build files with reverence. You bake test stability into every commit. You write better documentation. Because no one should have to go through 27 failed attempts if it can be avoided.

And yet — deep down — you know you’ll be back. You’ll write another plugin or feature or fix. Another PR will go up. Another CI build will turn red. And once again, the rollercoaster will start.

But next time, you’ll wear a seatbelt.