Update on recent CI changes?

[MichelZ]

I've seen changes recently as to when CI runs (e.g. not on Forks anymore) - would you mind giving us peasants an update on the status of this? What's the change? Why? Is it Permanent?

Thhhhx bye

[David-Engel]

New security policies.

1. PR validation requires a team member comment before running..
2. PR validation against forks no longer has access to secret variables. We have some jobs that run against a static Always Encrypted + secure enclaves environment for test coverage, which are no longer able to run against forks.

Yes, this is permanent. Yes, this is an inconvenience. 😞 Please @ the dotnet/sqlclientdevteam or an individual on the team if you need us to trigger CI for you.

[Wraith2]

This is an unwelcome change. Not having CI auto run at a basic level is going to slow down the pace of development. As seen recently it's entirely possible to have a local build that works but which fails on an obscure combination build in CI.

Is it possible to break the enclave/secret requiring parts out into a separate set of items that can be selectively run manually by the team who have permissions?

[David-Engel]

Agree on this being a PITA for external contributors.

The secret part is already separated. Forks will never have access to secrets. But there is still a requirement for a team member comment before kicking off CI. 😞 We are considering switching to GitHub actions for automatic CI validation (if that's feasible and not going to be blocked in the future), but that's a good chunk of work.

[MichelZ]

Yeah, Unfortunately this makes it very uncomfortable for me to contribute to this project, so I'll likely refrain from it for the time being

[Wraith2]

I've filed some issues about the local developer experience with tests

#3193
#3192
#3191

which will need to be fixed if we can't use the CI to test builds.

The local test experience has always been awful and hard in the places where it doesn't simply fail.
Hopefully if these issues can be addressed contributors will be able to continue to contribute.

[paulmedynski]

We continue to investigate ways to improve this situation for external contributors. Stay tuned!