[DISCUSS] Slim down scope of CI

[Pedro Larroy <pe...@gmail.com>]

Hi

I would like to propose a discussion to slim down CI by dropping some jobs
which are of questionable value, other which have received little community
support:

- Drop centos: we can't support every distro, if anything we should clearly
specify which versions of base libraries are needed and test for the latest
stable release of Ubuntu. I don't see much value in testing different
distribution flavours. Not sure what was the rationale for adding CentOS in
the past but this might no longer apply.

- Drop windows: windows has received little attention from the community
and mostly has served as a gatekeeping from CI.

Dropping windows would allow to migrate to a more advanced CI framework
such as Drone or a fully container based one given that Jenkins has quite a
bit of baggage and for the most part we are testing on containers.

Pedro.

Re: [DISCUSS] Slim down scope of CI

[Pedro Larroy <pe...@gmail.com>]

Gathering this data would be useful to make a decision.

I myself have invested lots of time porting to other platforms such as PI,
JETSON, Arm or Android. If the community is interested in maintaining a
platform there should be action. For a long time I haven't seen much effort
there. Ideally I like to see several platforms windows for portability
reasons. But I question there's bandwidth for that.

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019, Aaron Markham <aa...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> I have an open issue about gathering data per platform install so there
can
> be an informed discussion on prioritization or even cutting platforms.
> Until then... I wouldn't cut one.
>
> I would like to hear the pros and cons for dropping some native platform
> support in favor of containers. But... For windows I believe Nvidia still
> hasn't provided a way to access the GPU from docker on most windows OSs.
If
> that's true, that would imply we shouldn't drop windows assuming that
> windows users will be able to run things in docker. That being said, why
> support every range of possibilty of blas or mkl or opencv? Why not come
up
> with a set of strict dependencies for windows to simplify the build, CI,
> and binary distribution?
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 09:30 Pedro Larroy <pe...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> I would like to propose a discussion to slim down CI by dropping some
jobs
>> which are of questionable value, other which have received little
community
>> support:
>>
>> - Drop centos: we can't support every distro, if anything we should
clearly
>> specify which versions of base libraries are needed and test for the
latest
>> stable release of Ubuntu. I don't see much value in testing different
>> distribution flavours. Not sure what was the rationale for adding CentOS
in
>> the past but this might no longer apply.
>>
>> - Drop windows: windows has received little attention from the community
>> and mostly has served as a gatekeeping from CI.
>>
>> Dropping windows would allow to migrate to a more advanced CI framework
>> such as Drone or a fully container based one given that Jenkins has
quite a
>> bit of baggage and for the most part we are testing on containers.
>>
>> Pedro.
>>
>

Re: [DISCUSS] Slim down scope of CI

[Aaron Markham <aa...@gmail.com>]

I have an open issue about gathering data per platform install so there can
be an informed discussion on prioritization or even cutting platforms.
Until then... I wouldn't cut one.

I would like to hear the pros and cons for dropping some native platform
support in favor of containers. But... For windows I believe Nvidia still
hasn't provided a way to access the GPU from docker on most windows OSs. If
that's true, that would imply we shouldn't drop windows assuming that
windows users will be able to run things in docker. That being said, why
support every range of possibilty of blas or mkl or opencv? Why not come up
with a set of strict dependencies for windows to simplify the build, CI,
and binary distribution?


On Wed, Aug 28, 2019, 09:30 Pedro Larroy <pe...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi
>
> I would like to propose a discussion to slim down CI by dropping some jobs
> which are of questionable value, other which have received little community
> support:
>
> - Drop centos: we can't support every distro, if anything we should clearly
> specify which versions of base libraries are needed and test for the latest
> stable release of Ubuntu. I don't see much value in testing different
> distribution flavours. Not sure what was the rationale for adding CentOS in
> the past but this might no longer apply.
>
> - Drop windows: windows has received little attention from the community
> and mostly has served as a gatekeeping from CI.
>
> Dropping windows would allow to migrate to a more advanced CI framework
> such as Drone or a fully container based one given that Jenkins has quite a
> bit of baggage and for the most part we are testing on containers.
>
> Pedro.
>