spacemacs/doc/CI_PLUMBING.org

#+TITLE: Continuous Integration

* Table of Contents                     :TOC_5_gh:noexport:
- [[#description][Description]]
- [[#overview][Overview]]
  - [[#tldr][TLDR]]
  - [[#current-stack][Current stack]]
    - [[#circleci][CircleCI]]
    - [[#github-actions][GitHub Actions]]
    - [[#docker][Docker]]
    - [[#clojure][Clojure]]
- [[#ci-files-and-directories][CI files and directories]]
- [[#workflows-groups-of-ci-jobs][Workflows (groups of CI jobs)]]
  - [[#pull-request-jobs][Pull request jobs]]
    - [[#emacs-lisp-tests][Emacs Lisp Tests]]
    - [[#documentation-validation][Documentation validation]]
    - [[#pr-validation][PR validation]]
  - [[#branch-updates-runs-on-merge][Branch updates (runs on merge)]]
    - [[#emacs-lisp-tests-1][Emacs Lisp Tests]]
    - [[#project-files-updates][Project files updates]]
      - [[#how-updates-end-up-in-spacemacs-repositories][How updates end up in Spacemacs repositories]]
      - [[#built-in-updates][Built-in updates]]
      - [[#documentation-updates][Documentation updates]]
      - [[#web-site-updates][Web site updates]]
  - [[#scheduled-jobs][Scheduled jobs]]
- [[#potential-improvements-pr-ideas][Potential improvements (PR ideas)]]
- [[#side-notes][Side notes]]
  - [[#we-used-to-have-travisci-3-ci-providers-at-the-same-time][We used to have TravisCI (3 CI providers at the same time)]]

* Description
Overview of our continuous integration, how it operates and what problems
solves.

* Overview
** TLDR
Spacemacs is big - the active maintainers team is small. The more we can
automate - the better. We use  [[https://circleci.com/][CircleCI]], [[https://github.com/features/actions][GitHub Actions]] and [[https://www.docker.com/][Docker]] to test PRs,
update built-in files, fix documentation and export it to [[https://develop.spacemacs.org/][develop.spacemacs.org]].
Most of the code is just a bunch of bash/EmacsLisp scripts and yml files, but
some of the documentation tools are written in Clojure.
If you prefer reading code instead of documentation, checkout out [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/develop/.circleci][CircleCI]] and
[[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/develop/.github/workflows][GitHub Actions]] directories.

** Current stack
Wait, what? Why Clojure, why 2 CI providers?
I knew you would ask this question, dear reader, so here's my rationale:

*** CircleCI
It has a cool set of features and a generous quota for open source projects.
But most importantly, unlike GitHub Actions, there is a straight forward way
to cache build dependencies between runs and using it in tandem with
GH Actions provides us with even more concurrency. It means that PR authors
have to wait less time for feedback. This is crucial since we have a lot of
test and platforms to cover. Also, CircleCI can run jobs on user provided Docker
images that it caches, so we do not hit the DockerHub pull quota.
On the downside, the CircleCI configuration file can be pretty involved,
has unexpected limitations that can leave you puzzled for quite a while.

*** GitHub Actions
Oh man, that's good. It is clear that GH team had the benefit of hindsight
when developed their CI platform. And it runs rely fast (at least for now).
Maybe, one day we'll fully switch to Actions. The biggest concern here is
the vendor lock-in since all of the good stuff is highly specific.
While CircleCI allows you to run a job locally for free. And run whole CI
on your own hardware with "strings attached".

*** Docker
Having a stable pre-build environment reduces headaches and improves
setup time. Duh!
Also DockerHub used to be a cool place to store and build huge images for
free, but now it has all sorts of quotas + RAM is pretty limited for memory
hungry JVM builds (((foreshadowing))). And it looks like they're going to
stop all automatic builds for free accounts.

*** Clojure
Besides the obvious fact that Rich Hickey's talks are the best.
Before we started with automation, Spacemacs already had a huge set of
documentation files that couldn't be fixed by a bunch of regular expressions
wrapped into bash/ELisp code.
The options were to either fix all README.org files by hand and keep fixing
them forever, since contributors often forget to format stuff properly and
nagging them constantly both wastes PR reviewer time and makes the
contributor less likely to stick. Or go all-in and create a system that
can extract data out of documentation files and rebuild them from scratch.
Clojure designed to push data around and it has specs that can be used
to validate documents, generate test data and constructors for org-mode
elements. The code is compiled to [[https://www.graalvm.org/reference-manual/native-image/][native-image]] so pretty much all of
the JVM drawbacks are mitigated, for the particular use case anyway.

* CI files and directories
- [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/develop/.ci][.ci]] is a shared CI directory that holds two config files:
  1. [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.ci/built_in_manifest][built_in_manifest]] list of upstream URL and target locations for
     built-in files.
  2. [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.ci/spacedoc-cfg.edn][spacedoc-cfg.edn]] configuration file for Spacemacs documentation tools.
     More details in [[#documentation-updates][Documentation updates]].
- [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/develop/.github/workflows][.github/workflows]] place where GitHub workflow files live:
  - =workflows/scripts/test= runner script for EmacsLisp tests.
  - =workflows/scripts/dot_lock.el= package lock file that adds local ELPA
    mirror.
  - =elisp_test.yml= runs EmacsLisp tests on PR and branch updates.
  - =rebase.yml= we don't really use it :) It rebases PR onto current HEAD,
    it doesn't always work and requires personal token to run automatically.
  - =stale.yml= manages stale issues and PRs.
- [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/develop/.circleci][.circleci]] everything specific for CircleCI. Documentation related files
  stored in the =org= sub folder, =web= is where HTML export stuff hides,
 =built_in= is all about updating built-in files and =update= contains helpers
  related to making patches and pushing changes. The rest is a bunch of
  shared script files. The specific cases are =shared= file that loads before
  each script run for every job, =config.yml= - CircleCI bootstrap script that
  generates the config that CircleCI runs for actual jobs. It does so by
  rendering =config_tmpl.yml= template file.

* Workflows (groups of CI jobs)
** Pull request jobs
*** Emacs Lisp Tests
Code tests are handled by GitHub Actions exclusively.
The stages are:
1. Emacs installation with [[https://github.com/purcell/setup-emacs][purcell/setup-emacs]] - for UNIX and
   [[https://github.com/jcs090218/setup-emacs-windows][jcs090218/setup-emacs-windows]] for Windows. The step is configured
   by a job matrix. With two keys =os= and =emacs_version=. CI runs test for
   every possible combination. The stage ends up seriously bloated with
   repetition since the actions sometimes fail (especially for MacOS)
   so I added 3 sets of retires for the both actions. Currently GitHub
   [[https://github.community/t/how-to-retry-a-failed-step-in-github-actions-workflow/125880][doesn't provide a better way to implement this]].
2. Checkout - clones the repo.
3. Installation of a local ELPA mirror with packages used be the tests.
   The archive is build daily in [[https://github.com/JAremko/testelpa-develop][JAremko/testelpa-develop]] repository and
   configured by .spacemacs files used in test. The mirror is set as a top
   priority package repository via [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.github/workflows/scripts/dot_lock.el][Spacemacs lock file]] this way we actually
   install the packages (it is important to test that the system works) and
   if some packages are missing (for example, the mirror can be outdated)
   then they will be installed from a remote repository.
4. Run the tests! CI run core, base and layer tests sequentially because
   heaving 20+ CI results for a PR makes people ignore them. And this way
   they start faster since we cut on setup time. But the tests have to
 =always= clean after themselves to avoid affecting the next ones.

For more details see the [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.github/workflows/elisp_test.yml][workflow]] file.

*** Documentation validation
This job uses [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.circleci/select_pr_changed][.circleci/select_pr_changed]] to find out what files are changed in
the tested PR and if any of them are .org files it will check that they can be
processed by exporting and validating them. The process will be explored further
in the [[#documentation-updates][Documentation updates]] section.

*** PR validation
There are only two jobs here.[[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.circleci/PR_base][.circleci/PR_base]] makes sure that the PR
is against develop branch and [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.circleci/PR_rebased][.circleci/PR_rebased]] checks if the PR
needs a rebase (only when it's updated, so Spacemacs HEAD can actually get,
well... Ahead).

** Branch updates (runs on merge)
*** Emacs Lisp Tests
Same as [[#emacs-lisp-tests][Emacs Lisp Tests]] on PRs.

*** Project files updates
All updates are handled by CircleCI. There are two config files:
[[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.circleci/config.yml][.circleci/config.yml]] that injects =IS_BRANCH_UDATE= environment variable into
the second file [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.circleci/config_tmpl.yml][.circleci/config_tmpl.yml]] - actual config that CI will use.
It has to be done this way because environment variables aren't accessible
outside workflows, but CI needs =IS_BRANCH_UDATE= to choose what workflows
to run.
[[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.circleci/config_tmpl.yml][.circleci/config_tmpl.yml]] begins with declarations of =parameters= (they
are used to configure jobs) and =spacetools= executor. Every job runs inside of
a freshly spawned =jare/spacemacs-circleci:latest= container that has Emacs and
documentation tools, hub CLI and some other stuff. Here's its [[https://github.com/JAremko/spacemacs-circleci/blob/master/Dockerfile][docker file]] and
its base image's [[https://github.com/JAremko/spacetools/blob/master/Dockerfile.noemacs][docker file]].
The middle section of the config defines jobs and their names. At the end of the
file we have workflow definitions that aggregate jobs by names. Here you can see
how =is_branch_update= parameter is used to select which workflows should be
ran. Its value is set by inlined =IS_BRANCH_UDATE= environment variable that
comes from environment variables page under CircleCI project settings.

**** How updates end up in Spacemacs repositories
Merging updates is semi-automatic. Bot (specified by =UPD_BOT_LOGIN= job
environment variable) uses GitHub token (stored in CircleCI project settings) to
push updated version of Spacemacs develop branch into its fork (=UPD_BOT_REPO=)
then it opens pull request to =PRJ_REPO= owned by =PRJ_OWNER= (the fork is based
on it). =PUBLISH= variable also used as a name for the fork repo branch while
=PR_BRANCH= is the branch against which PR will be opened. See [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.circleci/update/push][.circleci/update/push]]
and [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.circleci/update/maybe_pr][.circleci/update/maybe_pr]] files for inner-works. Most of bash variables are
configured in the [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.circleci/shared][.circleci/shared]] file. The PRs are merged manually.

**** Built-in updates
Setup is really simple here. We have [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.circleci/built_in/upd_built_in][.circleci/built_in/upd_built_in]] bash
script that reads [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.ci/built_in_manifest][.ci/built_in_manifest]] file line by line and downloads every
file into the specified location.

**** Documentation updates
Firstly, files are exported into [[https://github.com/edn-format/edn][edn]] format. The file extension is .sdn
"Spacemacs Documentation Notation" - if you will, it's done to avoid collisions
with config .edn files. The exporting is done by Emacs Lisp program based on
[[https://github.com/emacsmirror/org/blob/master/lisp/ox.el][ox.el]]. [[https://github.com/JAremko/sdnize.el][Here's repository]]. The program extracts data and perform basic
validations. The resulting .sdn files then process by [[https://github.com/JAremko/spacetools][spacetools]] (I'll work on
documentation). The steps are:
1. parse and validate .sdn files
2. Generae LAYERS.sdn file from them.
3. Generate new set of .org files and replace the old ones.

=spacetools= configured by [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.ci/spacedoc-cfg.edn][.ci/spacedoc-cfg.edn]] file. For details on how
LAYERS.org generation works see [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/CONTRIBUTING.org#readmeorg-tags]["README.org tags" section of CONTRIBUTING.org]]
The rest of configs(and their default values) are listed [[https://github.com/JAremko/spacetools/blob/master/components/spacedoc/src/spacetools/spacedoc/config.clj][here]].

**** Web site updates
HTML generation code lives in [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/core/core-documentation.el][core/core-documentation.el]].
=spacemacs/publish-doc= is the entry function. All the interesting parts are in
preprocessors. Search for =Add preprocessors here= comment.
Overall - pretty basic. When I finish with documenting/refactoring =spacetools=
I'll probably use it to generate HTML similarly to how it generates .org files.
What makes this job special is that CircleCI caches EmacsLisp dependencies of
the HTML exporter script. See =save_cache= and =restore_cache= sections
in the [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.circleci/config_tmpl.yml][config file]]. Even with this, export is pretty slow since Emacs processes
files sequentially.

** Scheduled jobs
We have 2 cron(scheduled) jobs: [[https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/blob/develop/.github/workflows/stale.yml][Managing stale issues]] with [[https://github.com/actions/stale][actions/stale]] and
running built-in update job. The last one is ran by CircleCI and currently seems
to bug out since CircleCI [[https://discuss.circleci.com/t/setup-workflow-and-scheduled-workflow-in-the-same-configuration/39932/6][doesn't support cron jobs with setup configs]].
As a fall-back mechanism, CI updates built-in files every time Spacemacs
develop branch is pushed.

* Potential improvements (PR ideas)
- CircleCI config generation stage can test if a PR changes any .org file
  and schedule documentation testing job only if it does.
- PR validation job can be moved to CircleCI config generation stage. If
  it isn't valid - all CircleCI jobs can be skipped.
- Web site repo becomes too heavy and PR diffs are meaningless. Removing update
  dates that are embedded into each exported HTML files would reduce the
  patch size drastically.
- Figure out how to retry installation of Emacs for EmacsLisp tests in more
  concise manner. 
- EmacsLisp step that executes the tests isn't DRY.
- Emacs Install retries can use some delay between the attempts since it is
  likely that a failed upstream repo will fail again if you don't give it any
  time to recover/change state. But it shouldn't add delay to runs without
  failures since they vastly outnumber failed ones.
- See if we actually properly clean all they side effects between running
  EmacsLisp tests.
- CircleCI script files can have better names.
- Better error reporting in scripts. It is hard to debug CI so knowing what
  exactly went wrong would help a lot.

* Side notes
** We used to have TravisCI (3 CI providers at the same time)
We ran long running jobs there but ended up dropping the CI since TravisCI
doesn't allow collaborators to read/set environment variables anymore,
[[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eoq3OnWW4AIy7ih?format=jpg&name=large][they could be in some kind of trouble]] or [[https://blog.travis-ci.com/oss-announcement][maybe not]]. Anyway, when TravisCI
stopped running jobs on their old domain (as a part of the migration from
[[https://travis-ci.org/]] to [[https://www.travis-ci.com/]]) I decided to use it
as an opportunity to have fewer kinds of configs. Still, it's good environment
for building heavy (both in build time and RAM) Docker images.