Re: Cirrus-ci is lowering free CI cycles - what to do with cfbot, etc?

On Tue, Aug 8, 2023 at 9:26 PM Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On 2023-08-08 11:58:25 +0300, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
> > On 08/08/2023 05:15, Andres Freund wrote:
> > > With the improvements detailed below, cirrus' free CI would last
> > > about ~65 runs / month.
> >
> > I think that's plenty.
>
> Not so sure, I would regularly exceed it, I think. But it definitely will
> suffice for more casual contributors.
>
>
> > > Potential paths forward for cfbot, in addition to the above:
> > >
> > > - Pay for compute / ask the various cloud providers to grant us compute
> > > credits. At least some of the cloud providers can be used via cirrus-ci.
> > >
> > > - Host (some) CI runners ourselves. Particularly with macos and windows, that
> > > could provide significant savings.
> > >
> > > - Build our own system, using buildbot, jenkins or whatnot.
> > >
> > >
> > > Opinions as to what to do?
> >
> > The resources for running our own system isn't free either. I'm sure we can
> > get sponsors for the cirrus-ci credits, or use donations.
>
> As outlined in my reply to Alvaro, just using credits likely is financially
> not viable...
>
>

In case it's helpful, from an SPI oriented perspective, $7K/month is
probably an order of magnitude more than what we can sustain, so I
don't see a way to make that work without some kind of additional
magic that includes other non-profits and/or commercial companies
changing donation habits between now and September.

Purchasing a couple of mac-mini's (and/or similar gear) would be near
trivial though, just a matter of figuring out where/how to host it
(but I think infra can chime in on that if that's what get's decided).

The other likely option would be to seek out cloud credits from one of
the big three (or others); Amazon has continually said they would be
happy to donate more credits to us if we had a use, and I think some
of the other hosting providers have said similarly at times; so we'd
need to ask and hope it's not too bureaucratic.

Robert Treat
https://xzilla.net