[petsc-dev] Getting .gitlab.ci file out of repository? https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/pipelines/settings.html

[Satish Balay]

On Tue, 23 Jun 2020, Satish Balay via petsc-dev wrote:

> One way to do this is with redundancy [of machines - where same test would work on either machine] - which we don't have for all OSes..

Just wanted to add - this was not easy to do even with linux or OSX.. [Windows is a different beast :(]

With linux:

-  difference in hardware versions [different gen Intel CPUs] cause PGI test failures [when reusing petsc-hash-packages built on a slightly different version]
- slight difference in software stack [- even with the same OS/version] causes gcov failures [when reusing petsc-hash-packages built on a slightly different version]

With OSX - For some reason Apple decides to have slightly different version of compilers on each of the boxes - even though I run updates at the same time..

balay at sb /home/balay/tmp
$ ssh ipro clang --version
Apple clang version 11.0.3 (clang-1103.0.32.62)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin19.5.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin
balay at sb /home/balay/tmp
$ ssh jpro clang --version
Apple clang version 11.0.3 (clang-1103.0.32.62)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin19.5.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin
balay at sb /home/balay/tmp
$ ssh kpro clang --version
Apple clang version 11.0.0 (clang-1100.0.33.8)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin19.5.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin
balay at sb /home/balay/tmp
$ 

And some (opt) test failed (or gave different results?) on of these boxes (jpro).  The other one gets random <U+0000> errors (kpro)

So i have some these tests bound to a machine instead of having them float between equivalent machines..

I guess things can be improved by somehow deploying the exact same hardware, software etc, but then this reduces some of the test coverage.. [for ex: removing various linux OS variants - and using a single  one]

Different trade-offs that are already represented in current .gitlab-ci.yaml.

Satish