CI with GitHub Actions

Intentions in using GitHub Actions

We want to test all PRs before mergeing by:

  • build test

  • code linting

  • license check

  • unit-tests

  • creating a test coverage report

  • smoke tests

  • integration tests

  • running benchmarks

  • automatic upload of new releases

How to develop GitHub Actions

Find a detailed documentation here

Adding Badges with CI status

Paste a link in the form of ![badge](https://github.com/Elektrobit/elos/actions/workflows/build-and-test.yml/badge.svg) where you want to integrate the badge for the build-and-test workflow.

Find an explanation here

Running GitHub Actions locally

To run the GitHub Actions locally act can be used.

The way the Actions are written right now they need an ubuntu image with passwordless sudo. With that image build under the tag ubuntu-sudo the command can be run:

act -P ubuntu-latest=ubuntu-sudo --pull=false --artifact-server-path=/tmp/artifacts

which leaves the build artefacts under /tmp/artifacts

known issues

  • job artefacts lose their permissions so executables are no longer set as executable when downloaded in a different job

    • a possibility to fix that ist to run chmod on all files needing specific permissions. for example to make all utests in the Release build folder executable:

      for test in $(find build/Release/cmake/ -name "*_utest"); do
    chmod +x $test
done

  • uploading and downloading artefacts with actions/upload-artifact@v3 & actions/download-artifact@v3 takes a very long time, especially with artefacts containing a lot of (small) files.