[criemen]

This is amazing.

At $workplace, we have a script that extracts a toolchain from a GitHub actions windows runner, packages it up, stuffs it into git LFS, which is then pulled by bazel as C++ toolchain.

This is the more scalable way, and I assume it could still somewhat easily be integrated into a bazel build.

[dgxyz]

Keeping CI entirely out of windows desktop development is the biggest efficiency and cost improvement I've seen in the last 15 years. Our CI toolchain broke so we moved back to a release manager doing it manually. It takes him 20x less time to build it and distribute it (scripted) than it does to maintain the CI pipeline and his desktop machine is several times faster than any cloud CI node we can get hold of.

Edit: Uses a shit load less actual energy than full-building a product thousands of times that never gets run.

[wwweston]

This is really interesting. Do you think it’s possible server-deployed software could also get similar efficiencies with adequate testing?

[dgxyz]

Yeah it really doesn’t matter where you build stuff. The big push to CI is from companies that want to sell you a service to do it.

Software should build and test the same everywhere. If you have to use it, CI should only wrap that.