<![CDATA[i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it]]>i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it

for me, aside from the obvious reliability aspect (that could probably be mostly achieved by every contributor having a pre-commit hook that runs tests in a nix shell or something), the key utility provided by CI is legibility:

  • when a change is made, me and others are on the same page on how it's tested and what the acceptance criteria are
  • when a release is made, me and others are on the same page on which steps are taken and in which environment to build and upload artifacts

this is almost more important than the added reliability:

  • i do not want to have to maintain a special environment on my special machine that is able to do releases
  • i want to empower contributors who aren't me to do releases on their own with just forge access

this is enough of a benefit that the risks from GitHub Actions design issues are worth mitigating in order to use the workflow

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/topic/418b8677-2451-4c59-9ffd-3b6aee019975/i-know-some-people-oppose-the-widespread-use-of-ci-on-ideological-grounds-so-i-think-it-s-worth-it-thinking-about-why-we-value-itRSS for NodeSat, 06 Jun 2026 05:31:33 GMTMon, 18 May 2026 23:25:12 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 07:51:33 GMT]]>@dalias @whitequark @wwahammy these can be solved by hosting your own GitLab, Forgejo, or Gitea instance, using an artifact storage (either built-in or something like Nexus) and not overcomplicating your CI setup (e.g. just calling the script/build system/test rather than having entire scripts in the CI)

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/thepwnicorn/statuses/116600150018945120https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/thepwnicorn/statuses/116600150018945120Tue, 19 May 2026 07:51:33 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 06:12:33 GMT]]>@dalias @whitequark @wwahammy I hope I didn't lose the right end of this thread with so many side replies it needs its own representational format. Only meta communication from my side:

Thanks for the civil discussion, a rarity in public Internet when different opinions clash. I know there's a lot of own experiences, assumptions, and opinions, some of them in comparable direction while others being diametrical.

Anyway, I enjoyed this discussion wholeheartedly. Not because it could also be a panel discussion but rather because they highlight reasons for actions being taken (with different findings but that is okay on my page)

I'd like to see more of this in the future ๐Ÿ™๐Ÿพ

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.tchncs.de/users/ppxl/statuses/116599760722078770https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.tchncs.de/users/ppxl/statuses/116599760722078770Tue, 19 May 2026 06:12:33 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 05:02:15 GMT]]>@whitequark @dalias @glyph it really seems like it comes down to "GitHub doesn't want to fix it"

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/wwahammy/statuses/116599484293475699https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/wwahammy/statuses/116599484293475699Tue, 19 May 2026 05:02:15 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:44:30 GMT]]>@MrDOS @dalias @wwahammy (the reason it had to do that is that I had no good way to make a write-through cache, so after uploading something, I think it was to jfrog?, it had to be downloaded at least once before becoming usable. it was maddening.)

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598470763570173https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598470763570173Tue, 19 May 2026 00:44:30 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:44:26 GMT]]>@whitequark @MrDOS @wwahammy A similar visceral reaction is probably a large part of my rage at this kind of stuff.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/dalias/statuses/116598470516299915https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/dalias/statuses/116598470516299915Tue, 19 May 2026 00:44:26 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:43:06 GMT]]>@MrDOS @dalias @wwahammy I don't think I have words to adequately describe waiting for Conda to download a build of LLVM you just uploaded there minutes ago... for 90 minutes... then deciding to discard everything it's done and download it again, for some inscrutable dependency solver reasons I could never nail down

I think it may have improved since but it's why I still have a visceral reaction to Conda. it's basically like this

Link Preview Image
]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598465296118589https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598465296118589Tue, 19 May 2026 00:43:06 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:39:18 GMT]]>@dalias @wwahammy the unfortunate part about being a comparative drop in the bucket is that you could reduce your traffic by 99.9% and nobody on the other end would even notice. in general it doesn't look like a problem that will be solved unless e.g. PyPI starts responding with 429 to requests from Azure's ASN, and which will probably be solved quickly afterwards

from memory, the latest plan on this was to start charging the biggest bandwidth users, but I'm not sure where that's at. maybe @glyph knows?

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598450312052681https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598450312052681Tue, 19 May 2026 00:39:18 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:37:59 GMT]]>@whitequark I mean I feel like it's less of an "assumption" and more of a long history of unpleasant experiences.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/dalias/statuses/116598445115821214https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/dalias/statuses/116598445115821214Tue, 19 May 2026 00:37:59 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:36:32 GMT]]>@dalias no, I would rather like to see you question your assumptions (that other people just don't know how to build software) more often. which I know is a lot more work, but still

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598439419059754https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598439419059754Tue, 19 May 2026 00:36:32 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:35:08 GMT]]>@dalias @wwahammy practically speaking, since most of the traffic is coming from npm/pip/cargo/etc I think you should be able to reduce load on external services without intercepting every network request, but by providing local on-demand caches of popular (thus, expensive to run) repositories. this is unlikely to make much of a difference because the supermajority of the load will continue to come from GitHub, but in a hypothetical world where GitHub implemented this, it would improve things a lot

of course GitHub doesn't care too much because npm traffic should be free for them and I guess they just don't think too much about the rest? gross behavior

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598433928541632https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598433928541632Tue, 19 May 2026 00:35:08 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:33:26 GMT]]>@whitequark If this is a conversation you'd rather I not continue I'm fine with dropping it.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/dalias/statuses/116598427264145307https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/dalias/statuses/116598427264145307Tue, 19 May 2026 00:33:26 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:33:10 GMT]]>@MrDOS @dalias @wwahammy this was fiber, believe it or not. the technology caught up with 2010s, the billing... did not

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598426231164877https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598426231164877Tue, 19 May 2026 00:33:10 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:31:46 GMT]]>@whitequark @dalias @wwahammy โ€œ10 Mbps linkโ€ That's a nice fast UART you've got there!

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/MrDOS/statuses/116598420687197366https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/MrDOS/statuses/116598420687197366Tue, 19 May 2026 00:31:46 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:31:41 GMT]]>@whitequark @wwahammy TBH if you can't trust your incremental builds to be incremental, that's something I'd want a good CI to test too. ๐Ÿคช

Like, both preserving artifacts from parent commit, *and* running a new build from scratch, and asserting that the results are byte-for-byte identical.

No, that doesn't sound fun to implement.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/dalias/statuses/116598420376403398https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/dalias/statuses/116598420376403398Tue, 19 May 2026 00:31:41 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:30:07 GMT]]>@dalias not "Huh, I wonder why is it that Forgejo does that?" (I don't know but I suspect it has something to do with IO load from repeatedly requested archives), directly to "It's a regression compared to [favorite project]!". it's insufferable

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598414192822135https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598414192822135Tue, 19 May 2026 00:30:07 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:28:17 GMT]]>@dalias see, I don't really like talking to you because of your tendency to arrogantly jump to conclusions without ever doing a bare minimum of research

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598406991640512https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598406991640512Tue, 19 May 2026 00:28:17 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:25:50 GMT]]>@dalias @wwahammy so I've been responsible for the operation of something more structured for a few yearsโ€”in my case, a complex Buildbot CI workflow that was updating and building an LLVM/Clang/ARTIQ on a 10 Mbps link (not a typo). I actually did set up the caching system you're talking about here, which used nginx in a forward proxy mode to intercept and store Conda package requests, and it was one of my most nightmarish technical assignments. if I never have to do that again in my life it will be too soon. the correct amount of state in a CI system is zero, because this actually makes it knowable, instead of a bundle of surprises you never know will work from one build to the next because of changes you couldn't predict or track

this doesn't mean that redownloading the same static files over and over is necessary, but the basic principle of "preserve nothing from run to run" is the only way to stay sane

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598397373157622https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598397373157622Tue, 19 May 2026 00:25:50 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:24:39 GMT]]>@dalias @whitequark @wwahammy Do you include SourceHut in that analysis? In some ways it's even more minimalist than cgit.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116175731239673526/statuses/116598392684559586https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116175731239673526/statuses/116598392684559586Tue, 19 May 2026 00:24:39 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:22:36 GMT]]>@whitequark @wwahammy Gotta love how much of a regression all the fancy forges are versus plain cgi-bin cgit... ๐Ÿ˜ซ

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/dalias/statuses/116598384653752300https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/dalias/statuses/116598384653752300Tue, 19 May 2026 00:22:36 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:21:00 GMT]]>@dalias @wwahammy that is how Forgejo works today; the specific externalities that downloading an archive would have over cloning the repo

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598378389657054https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598378389657054Tue, 19 May 2026 00:21:00 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:20:24 GMT]]>@noisytoot @dalias @wwahammy nope. but if you're actively trying to cache intermediate products, you'd have to either allow persistent writes to /nix or allow writes to substituters, both of which seem like they'd allow for cache poisoning (or at least, they don't seem robust enough that I can guarantee absence of it)

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598376010529892https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598376010529892Tue, 19 May 2026 00:20:24 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:19:24 GMT]]>@dalias @valorzard @wwahammy I think if you have significantly varying amounts of confidence in your main branch there's something wrong with your approach to development, even if non-developers only ever use releases. releases are useful to indicate evolution of the support contract, sure; but if your main branch is sometimes especially wonky because you landed a poorly tested change you should probably test your changes better

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598372050460996https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.treehouse.systems/users/whitequark/statuses/116598372050460996Tue, 19 May 2026 00:19:24 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:18:33 GMT]]>@whitequark @wwahammy I don't see why the archive would need to be stored. Tarballs are fully streamable and the git-archive command emits them as a stream not with temporary storage.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/dalias/statuses/116598368720035625https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/dalias/statuses/116598368720035625Tue, 19 May 2026 00:18:33 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to i know some people oppose the widespread use of CI on ideological grounds, so i think it's worth it thinking about why we value it on Tue, 19 May 2026 00:17:35 GMT]]>@whitequark @wwahammy OK, but that's the fault of the CI system doing a shallow clone rather than a fully recursive checkout from already-cloned-and-cached repositories. It's the fault of poor abstraction layers that behave as "just do whatever you want to script in this throwaway container" rather than something more structured.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/dalias/statuses/116598364897382965https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/dalias/statuses/116598364897382965Tue, 19 May 2026 00:17:35 GMT