About org-mode-tests and CI

[Simon Tournier]

Hi,

Recently, Bastien told me about using GNU Guix for some tests of Org.
Neat!  Then, Bastien pointed this org-mode-tests [1] effort.

Unrelated, Philip provides Guix recipes [2] for various old Emacs
versions.

Org and Guix are part of the GNU system.  Therefore, we could imagine to
bridge instead of relying on Debian. :-)

Moreover, what would be another advantage?  Run the exact same
computational environment from locally to SourceHut builds.

Two directions:

1. The SourceHut image of Guix [3] could be used but – and maybe I am
missing a point since I am not an expert about SourceHut CI – the state
(revision) of this image is not controlled and thus it requires
something like:

        image: guix
        tasks:
          - guix: |
              guix pull -C project/path/to/channels.scm

Well, I do not know how SourceHut is caching but somehow the .yml
configuration leads to always the same computational environment
(image), in which “make test” is run.  Therefore, the CI could spend
more time in computing again and again this fixed state than running the
Org test suite. :-)

2. Using [2], it appears to me almost straightforward to build
beforehand a Docker pack containing all the requirements; say emacs@26,
curl, gcc-toolchain, git, etc.  And this Docker pack would be built
using GNU Guix,

    guix pack -f docker -m manifest.scm

where the file manifest.scm lists all the requirements.  Using adequate
option as --save-provenance, this Docker pack can be inspectable [4] and
it could be stored to any Docker registery.

Hence, the line,

        image: debian/oldstable

or some images as,

        image: ubuntu/focal
        repositories:
          emacs: http://ppa.launchpad.net/kelleyk/emacs/ubuntu focal main 
3FF0E01EEAAFC9CD

would be replaced by some images produced by “guix pack -f docker”
stored to some Docker registery.


All in all, I forked the project [1] but the SourceHuts build (CI)
requires some fee, right?  Well, let me know how we could test this
approach of using Guix as base for running Org test suite.

(The maintenance of such can be part of the story too. ;-))


Last, without putting the cart before the horse, I think this work could
be a kind of preliminary proof-of-concept for testing Emacs packages
(ELPA, MELPA, etc.).

Cheers,
simon

1: https://git.sr.ht/~bzg/org-mode-tests
2: https://git.sr.ht/~pkal/guix-emacs-historical
3: https://man.sr.ht/~dhruvin/builds.sr.ht-guix-cookbook/
4: https://hpc.guix.info/blog/2021/10/when-docker-images-become-fixed-point/