Make use of CI/CD for framework development

[knoepfel]

DUNE US S&C R&D item 068

Robust Framework development will require sufficient use of CI/CD technology. It is not the responsibility of the framework project to provide the CI/CD infrastructure; however, the development team must develop a CI/CD policy. The CI/CD technology should be able to support that policy, which may include:

• Ensuring compliance of coding guidelines
• Code coverage metrics
• Successful execution of unit and integration tests

One possibility is to incorporate these checks as GitHub actions, which may or may not be constrained based on our free use of GitHub.

[pcanal]

Related issue: #31

[knoepfel]

We should implement a GitHub CI action before we start sharing code.

[knoepfel]

Related issues:

• Investigate GitHub options for profiling as part of CI #31
• Create GitHub starter CI action for Phlex #32

[knoepfel]

[Based on meeting held with @knoepfel, @aolivier23, and @greenc-FNAL]

Prioritized list

Needed now

0. Container image used by GitHub PR action, which includes GCC 15, ROOT 6.36/02, etc.

For PRs, we need to verify that the code:

1. Successfully builds and the unit tests successfully execute for:
   1. GCC and Clang (to what extent?)
   2. Optimized vs. Debug (with enabled assertions)
   3. AlmaLinux 9 (x86_64_v3)
2. Conforms to the approved style guide
3. All code changes are 100% covered by code-coverage tests

These checks will be implemented as GitHub actions. The fixes for any failures are the responsibility of the PR submitters.

We also need:

4. Debugging, benchmarking, and profiling tools
5. Documentation generation for source code

Needed in 6 months

6. Incorporate static analysis facilities as part of PR process
   1. Technology options: clang-tidy, cppcheck, ...
   2. Includes conformance to C++ core guidelines
7. Use release facilities for:
   1. Source/binary package production
   2. Dependency management and maintenance
8. Automatically generate and upload released and in-development documentation
9. Plan for AI use (code analysis, generation, and review), given experience in first 6 months
10. Determine whether additional debugging, benchmarking, and profiling tools are required.

Needed in 1 year

11. We need to be able to access to a GPU
12. Dependabots that can flag security issues
13. Cross-package PR coordination

[wddgit]

My 2 cents. We could add a "Needed Last Week" category that includes "builds and unit tests pass for an optimized GCC build on AlmaLinux 9 (x86_64_v3)". Get that working first.

[knoepfel]

Thanks, @wddgit. Let's talk about this at the next Phlex meeting.

[wlav]

Do we pick/have specific compiler versions? Either fixed or minimum? For that matter, vanilla Clang or Apple Clang? And for releases, do we expect (or are we expected) to deliver them as docker images? Is DUNE expected to use Phlex releases, or will they build from source for their own distributions?

[knoepfel]

Let's talk about this at the next Phlex meeting.