Deferred sensors with soft_fail=True lack parity skip on non-timeout failures
- Dominant language
- Python
- Stars
- 46.9k
- Forks
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- Avg merge
- 2d 9h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 472
Description
### Under which category would you file this issue?
Airflow Core
### Apache Airflow version
2.11.2
### What happened and how to reproduce it?
When running sensors with `deferred=False`, mode `reschedule` or `poke`, and `soft_fail=True`, unexpected errors will actually fail, instead of skip, but timeout errors will skip.
When doing the same, but with `soft_fail=True`, and `deferred=True`, unexpected errors will cause the task to skip. This means we cannot distinguish and alert if the sensor is misconfigured vs. timeout.
### What you think should happen instead?
Deferred sensors should have parity with non-deferred sensors, and if `soft_fail=True`, only skip on timeout-ish related errors
### Operating System
linux
### Deployment
Other Docker-based deployment
### Apache Airflow Provider(s)
_No response_
### Versions of Apache Airflow Providers
n/a, issue is in `main`/`master`
### Official Helm Chart version
Not Applicable
### Kubernetes Version
n/z
### Helm Chart configuration
n/a
### Docker Image customizations
n/a
### Anything else?
n/a
### Are you willing to submit PR?
- [x] Yes I am willing to submit a PR!
### Code of Conduct
- [x] I agree to follow this project's [Code of Conduct](https://github.com/apache/airflow/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md)
Contributor guide
Research direction
Start by comparing deferred sensor exception handling with the existing non-deferred reschedule and poke behavior for soft_fail=True. Confirm the timeout-related and unexpected-error paths, then add regression coverage showing that deferred sensors skip only timeout-ish failures and propagate unexpected errors like non-deferred sensors.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- data-engineering
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 3/5
- Estimated time
- 1-2 days
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 55/100