introduce an automation for GHA runner version update

[mblaze-da]

This introduces a new workflow that will fire roughly once every two weeks. It will update the version of the GHA runner base image that is used to build splice-test-docker-runner and splice-test-runner-hook images.

The shell script was tested locally. I'm not sure though if the whole solution is correct but I don't know how to test the actual workflow without creating it.

[julientinguely-da]

The shell script was tested locally. I'm not sure though if the whole solution is correct but I don't know how to test the actual workflow without creating it.

I think you could temporarily remove the schedule and manually trigger the action from the UI to see that it works as expected, no?

[julientinguely-da]

Besides doing this test, it looks good to me! Thanks!

[martinflorian-da]

Do we get notified if this fails? Not 100% sure but I think you need some more boilerplate for that...

S.a.:

splice/.github/actions/tests/failure_notifications/action.yml

Line 1 in 92d74d5

name: Notify Failures

[martinflorian-da]

(Unless it's super annoying to add, let's add notifications; we're very likely to not notice this getting hard broken otherwise.)

[mblaze-da]

I've copied the job from other workflows. I hope it works.

[martinflorian-da]

Is "build docker images" part of [static]?

If not we might want to either:

• add that (follow-up PR?)
• do a docker-build here on (only) splice-test-docker-runner?

I think I like the second option more (we change images ~rarely and when we do we typically also do full cluster tests which do build docker images), assuming that 1. we can do that without forcing a full splice build ( 🤞 ) and 2. we get notifications and a failures board entry in case this flow fails (see my other comment).

[mblaze-da]

Good idea! I've added explicit docker-build for these two images.

[martinflorian-da]

The shell script was tested locally. I'm not sure though if the whole solution is correct but I don't know how to test the actual workflow without creating it.

I think you could temporarily remove the schedule and manually trigger the action from the UI to see that it works as expected, no?

Can't you also trigger a GHA run from a branch? We do that for CircleCI runs all the time. But clicking around with your branch the new workflow doesn't seem to show up, sad. @isegall-da do you know of a good way to test this without merging to main first? (Which I'm not against here, for the record, just seems nicer if we can have a feedback loop that doesn't involve merging a PR.)

[isegall-da]

The shell script was tested locally. I'm not sure though if the whole solution is correct but I don't know how to test the actual workflow without creating it.

I think you could temporarily remove the schedule and manually trigger the action from the UI to see that it works as expected, no?

Can't you also trigger a GHA run from a branch? We do that for CircleCI runs all the time. But clicking around with your branch the new workflow doesn't seem to show up, sad. @isegall-da do you know of a good way to test this without merging to main first? (Which I'm not against here, for the record, just seems nicer if we can have a feedback loop that doesn't involve merging a PR.)

I think you need to add on: dispatch or something like that to the worklow to make it runnable directly (probably imprecise wording, I'm commuting)

[isegall-da]

The shell script was tested locally. I'm not sure though if the whole solution is correct but I don't know how to test the actual workflow without creating it.

I think you could temporarily remove the schedule and manually trigger the action from the UI to see that it works as expected, no?

Can't you also trigger a GHA run from a branch? We do that for CircleCI runs all the time. But clicking around with your branch the new workflow doesn't seem to show up, sad. @isegall-da do you know of a good way to test this without merging to main first? (Which I'm not against here, for the record, just seems nicer if we can have a feedback loop that doesn't involve merging a PR.)

I think you need to add on: dispatch or something like that to the worklow to make it runnable directly (probably imprecise wording, I'm commuting)

I was close, it's on: workflow_dispatch see here

[mblaze-da]

The shell script was tested locally. I'm not sure though if the whole solution is correct but I don't know how to test the actual workflow without creating it.

I think you could temporarily remove the schedule and manually trigger the action from the UI to see that it works as expected, no?

Can't you also trigger a GHA run from a branch? We do that for CircleCI runs all the time. But clicking around with your branch the new workflow doesn't seem to show up, sad. @isegall-da do you know of a good way to test this without merging to main first? (Which I'm not against here, for the record, just seems nicer if we can have a feedback loop that doesn't involve merging a PR.)

I think you need to add on: dispatch or something like that to the worklow to make it runnable directly (probably imprecise wording, I'm commuting)

I was close, it's on: workflow_dispatch see here

@isegall-da I do have this configured and I'm still not able to trigger it through gh workflow run. It is not listed as a workflow. I think the problem is something that they mentioned in a note under the doc you've linked:

This event will only trigger a workflow run if the workflow file exists on the default branch.

So it seems that I need some form of dummy definition for a workflow on main for it to be runnable from other branches. So I guess testing changes to existing workflows can be done easily but for new workflows it requires some prior changes on main.

[isegall-da]

The shell script was tested locally. I'm not sure though if the whole solution is correct but I don't know how to test the actual workflow without creating it.

I think you could temporarily remove the schedule and manually trigger the action from the UI to see that it works as expected, no?

Can't you also trigger a GHA run from a branch? We do that for CircleCI runs all the time. But clicking around with your branch the new workflow doesn't seem to show up, sad. @isegall-da do you know of a good way to test this without merging to main first? (Which I'm not against here, for the record, just seems nicer if we can have a feedback loop that doesn't involve merging a PR.)

I think you need to add on: dispatch or something like that to the worklow to make it runnable directly (probably imprecise wording, I'm commuting)

I was close, it's on: workflow_dispatch see here

@isegall-da I do have this configured and I'm still not able to trigger it through gh workflow run. It is not listed as a workflow. I think the problem is something that they mentioned in a note under the doc you've linked:

This event will only trigger a workflow run if the workflow file exists on the default branch.

So it seems that I need some form of dummy definition for a workflow on main for it to be runnable from other branches. So I guess testing changes to existing workflows can be done easily but for new workflows it requires some prior changes on main.

Argh, that's annoying. Oh, well, seems like "merge to main and test there" is the answer.