Re: [PATCH] .gitlab-ci.d/cirrus.yml: Shorten the runtime of the macOS and FreeBSD jobs

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Fri, Jul 26, 2024 at 11:18:43AM +0200, Thomas Huth wrote:
> 
> Looks like the reduction of this patch was not enough, we've run out of
> Cirrus-CI compute time again ... does anybody have additional ideas how we
> could avoid that in the future?

QEMU keeps getting bigger, so our attempts to cut down on what we
build mean we keep testing a narrower & narrower subset of
functionality. We long ago culled the obvious wastage.

One thing is to optimize our code such that it is less expensive
for the compiler. I feel like we've done that periodically already
with refactoring header files. It is a complex problem with no
quick wins to reduce compile time. If someone knows of more low
hanging fruit though, speak up.

Cirrus CI supports a "bring your hardware" model. We could do
that for FreeBSD testing, by leveraging our existnig Azure
account further to provide VMs. If doing that though, it'd
be saner to just do it in GitLab context directly. This huas
the burn of *us* maintaining FreeBSD images,and updating
them every time a new FreeBSD is released. ie you can't just
stick on 12.0, because when 12.1 is released, the ports
packages get rebuilt against new 12.1 and frequently become
uninstallable on the older minor release. IOW, we would have
a continual burden in updating our images to track FreeBSD
minor releases. Also this doesn't solve our macOS needs since
you can't just run macOS in any VM, it has to be Apple HW.

Cirrus CI lets you buy more CI credits. IIUC we get 50 credits
free each month. I can't see QEMU's usage, since it is private
to admins only:

  https://cirrus-ci.com/settings/github/qemu

if it is anything like libvirt though, I'm going to expect that
most of our credits are consumed by macOS, not FreeBSD, since
Cirrus CI charges for macOS at a higher level.

To stop running out of credits I guess we'll want to buy an
extra 20 credits in each freeze period - ie 60 a year. They
charge $1 per credit.

Does the QEMU project have funds available to spend on things
like this ?  It unfortunately requires a credit card to buy
more credits, so somehow QEMU would have to re-imburse an
individual maintainer for the purchase.

Final option is to make contact with Cirrus CI owners, and
ask if they might wish to directly sponsor QEMU in terms of
granting us extra credits, in exchange for including them on
our sponsor's page https://www.qemu.org/sponsors/.


With regards,
Daniel
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