Testing with CI

Testing infrastructure

When a Pull Request is opened on GitHub, GitHub Actions will automatically launch a build that will run all tests on some configurations (x86_64-gnu-llvm-X linux, x86_64-gnu-tools linux, mingw-check linux and mingw-check-tidy linux). In essence, each runs ./x test with various different options.

The integration bot bors is used for coordinating merges to the master branch. When a PR is approved, it goes into a queue where merges are tested one at a time on a wide set of platforms using GitHub Actions. Due to the limit on the number of parallel jobs, we run the main CI jobs under the rust-lang-ci organization (in contrast to PR CI jobs, which run under rust-lang directly). Most platforms only run the build steps, some run a restricted set of tests, only a subset run the full suite of tests (see Rust's platform tiers).

If everything passes, then all the distribution artifacts that were generated during the CI run are published.

Using CI to test

In some cases, a PR may run into problems with running tests on a particular platform or configuration. If you can't run those tests locally, don't hesitate to use CI resources to try out a fix.

As mentioned above, opening or updating a PR will only run on a small subset of configurations. Only when a PR is approved will it go through the full set of test configurations. However, you can try one of those configurations in your PR before it is approved. For example, if a Windows build fails, but you don't have access to a Windows machine, you can try running the Windows job that failed on CI within your PR after pushing a possible fix.

To do this, you'll need to edit src/ci/github-actions/jobs.yml. It contains three sections that affect which CI jobs will be executed:

  • The pr section defines everything that will run after a push to a PR.
  • The try section defines job(s) that are run when you ask for a try build using @bors try.
  • The auto section defines the full set of tests that are run after a PR is approved and before it is merged into the main branch.

You can copy one of the definitions from the auto section to the pr or try sections. For example, the x86_64-msvc job is responsible for running the 64-bit MSVC tests. You can copy it to the pr section to cause it to be executed after a commit is pushed to your PR, like this:

pr:
  ...
  - image: x86_64-gnu-tools
    <<: *job-linux-16c
  # this item was copied from the `auto` section
  # vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
  - image: x86_64-msvc
    env:
      RUST_CONFIGURE_ARGS: --build=x86_64-pc-windows-msvc --enable-profiler
      SCRIPT: make ci-msvc
    <<: *job-windows-8c

Then, you can commit the file and push to GitHub. GitHub Actions should launch the tests.

After you have finished your tests, don't forget to remove any changes you have made to jobs.yml.

If you need to make more complex modifications to CI, you will need to modify .github/workflows/ci.yml and possibly also src/ci/github-actions/calculate-job-matrix.py.

Although you are welcome to use CI, just be conscious that this is a shared resource with limited concurrency. Try not to enable too many jobs at once (one or two should be sufficient in most cases).