Re: CI and test improvements

On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 02:45:42PM -0800, Andres Freund wrote:
> > > > + ninja -C build |tee build/meson-logs/build.txt
> > > > + REM Since pipes lose exit status of the preceding command, rerun compilation,
> > > > + REM without the pipe exiting now if it fails, rather than trying to run checks
> > > > + ninja -C build > nul
> > >
> > > This seems mighty grotty :(. but I guess it's quick enough not worry about,
> > > and I can't come up with a better plan.
> > >
> > > It doesn't seem quite right to redirect into meson-logs/ to me, my
> > > interpretation is that that's "meson's namespace". Why not just store it in
> > > build/?
> >
> > I put it there so it'd be included with the build artifacts.
>
> Wouldn't just naming it build-warnings.log suffice? I don't think we
> want to actually upload build.txt - it already is captured.

Originally, I wanted the input and the output to be available as files
and not just in cirrus' web GUI, but maybe that's not important anymore.
I rewrote it again.

> > I'm not sure if this ought to be combined with/before/after your "move
> > compilerwarnings task to meson" patch? (Regarding that patch: I
> > mentioned that it shouldn't use ccache -C, and it should use
> > meson_log_artifacts.)
>
> TBH, I'm not quite sure a separate docs task does really still make
> sense after the SanityCheck task. It's worth building the docs even if
> some flappy test fails, but I don't think we should try to build the
> docs if the code doesn't even compile, in all likelihood a lot more is
> wrong in that case.

It'd be okay either way. I had split it out to 1) isolate the changes
in the "upload changed docs as artifacts" patch; and, 2) so the docs
artifacts are visible in a cfbot link called "Documentation"; and, 3) so
the docs task runs without a dependency on "Linux", since (as you said)
docs/errors are worth showing/reviewing/reporting/addressing separately
from test errors (perhaps similar to compiler warnings...).

I shuffled my branch around and sending now the current "docs" patches,
but I suppose this is waiting on the "convert CompilerWarnings task to
meson" patch.

--
Justin