Re: Boost CI - a modest proposal

From: Hans Dembinski (hans.dembinski_at_[hidden])
Date: 2023-05-02 10:15:36

> On 30. Apr 2023, at 17:37, Robert Ramey via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> 
> the implementation of Boost CI follows the normal pattern for the implementation of this functionality.  This entails download the latest version of the library to be tested and it's dependencies (or maybe all of boost?) from the repo, Building everything from scratch, running all the tests and logging the output there of.  This is done for each compiler / environment to be tested.  Other than the raw console logs, there is no presentation of the tests results (e.g boost test matrix).
> 
> This is extremely unsatisfactory.
> 
> a) It's ridiculously resource intensive.  Rebuilding everything all the time.
> 
> b) takes forever unless one has many more servers than we have.

These two points can be addressed somewhat by cutting down the matrix and by using ccache. You don't really need to test all versions of all compilers. For daily work it is sufficient to use the lowest and highest compiler versions you want to support.

If the main time is spend in compiling the test instead of running them, Boost.CI could be sped up by using ccache. If have used ccache in other projects, where it sped up the CI considerably.

Best regards,
Hans