Re: Changing virtual memory amount in Appveyor and Travis CI tests

From: Gavin Lambert (boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-09-21 03:59:47

On 21/09/2020 14:14, Edward Diener wrote:
> Is it possible through .yml file for Appveyor and Travis CI to change 
> the amount of virtual memory when running a CI test. I am running CI 
> tests for Boost PP which heavily use the preprocessor, and some of the 
> extended tests I am running fail on both Appveyor and Travis CIÂ  with 
> out of memory conditions while on my own local computer, with about 32 
> GB of ram, the tests succeed. I think in the real world most users now 
> have at least 32 GB of ram or more, while these virtual environments in 
> Appveyor and/or Travis CI probably run their tests with much less 
> overall virtual memory than an average user would have.

According to their websites, Appveyor VMs have a limit of around 6 GB 
and Travis VMs have a limit around 8 GB for Windows and 4 GB for 
Linux/MacOS.  Neither appear to be configurable in any way (but I am not 
an expert), which is understandable.

I realise you're probably deliberately testing edge cases with 
pathologic memory usage, but normally there'd be something seriously 
wrong if a build comes remotely close to using that much.

While yes, these days usually developers do have 32 GB RAM or more, the 
"popular" RAM size is still 16 GB or even less, and a lot of this space 
would be intended for parallel compiles or VMs and any single compile 
should assume it must use a lot less.