Re: glibc version mismatches in CI

From: Alexander Grund (alexander.grund_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-08-28 07:50:38

Am 27.08.24 um 19:10 schrieb Jeff Trull via Boost:
> It looks like the version of glibc in some of the old Ubuntu containers,
> which are required to compile against old versions of gcc,
> is incompatible with the Node executable that runs actions/checkout_at_v2 (and
> 3 and 4). You might see errors like this:

Some more details/context:

actions/cache_at_v3 can be used instead of the v2 as it is (likely) a small 
improvement although I forgot by now what they did.
Both have the same restriction in that they don't run in Node 20.
actions/cache_at_v4 should be used where possible, i.e. where Node 20 is 
available.

The GLIBC issue appears when using the `container` feature in the Github 
Actions yaml with Ubuntu 16.04 & 18.04.

Newer Ubuntu versions are available as runner images directly, i.e. `os: 
ubuntu-20.04`. Those should be preferred if the required compiler 
packages are available.
Going forward I hope we can drop the container jobs someday as the 
compilers tested (only) there become ancient.
(GCC 7 is in Ubuntu 20, GCC 14 is the latest release, for Clang it is 
Clang 8 with Clang 18 being the latest release)

I'd also like to suggest to take inspiration of the templates in Boost.CI:
https://github.com/boostorg/boost-ci/blob/master/.github/workflows/ci.yml


The relevant workaround for the glibc issue is here:
https://github.com/boostorg/boost-ci/blob/0e4bc4d58c45a3bad2eba054eafdaaef7b8275a4/.github/workflows/ci.yml#L146-L152

There I even went a step further and conditionally use 
actions/checkout_at_v3 or actions/checkout_at_v4
to avoid deprecation warnings and IIRC the newer versions have some 
reliability improvements.

>> Is there a fix other than "rewrite using manual
>> checkout"?
>> [...]
>> env:
>>    ACTIONS_ALLOW_USE_UNSECURE_NODE_VERSION: true
>>
>> Though it seems unwise to rely on in the long run.
> The only solution I know of is to stop using actions/checkout (or
> anything actions/* really).
I do prefer the declarative approach of using the actions instead of 
manual commands.
Especially not having to specify some parameters like the repository or 
fetch-depth is convenient.
So `- uses: actions/checkout_at_v4` was a nice and clean way to do the 
cloning without any "noise".
Of course this has changed due to this breakage and a manual clone step 
might be easier, especially if they completely drop the support for the 
workaround
before we drop support of the old compilers.
However the `actions/cache` action for use with ccache to speed up CI 
runs is highly useful to me and could not be easily replaced.
I also found other actions, such as `codecov/codecov-action_at_v4` to be 
more reliable than the manual approach as they seemingly
include logic to gracefully handle temporary issues such as network 
timeouts.
IIRC the checkout action has something like that too.

In the end it's a trade-off like everything else and needs a decision by 
the respective maintainers.

Happy CI testing!