[gmx-developers] merge request pipelines

[Eric Irrgang]

Hi Devs.

I just submitted https://gitlab.com/gromacs/gromacs/-/issues/3617 with 2 proposals to reduce the number CI pipelines we run while increasing their utility.

I think we can and should disable the "Merge Trains and pipelines for merged results" option.

It does not seem appropriate for our workflow. We already require an identical pipeline to succeed before the merge train can even be launched, and the only case where the "train" part works for us will be equivalent to just using the "merge when pipeline succeeds" button that we will have when we turn off the merge train option.

Also, I think we should make sure that the pipelines that block merge requests actually include all of the tests that we think should be blocking. This requires a little more work than just toggling an option. At the same time, we can and should stop running two pipelines for every push to the repository. Please see the issue description for more information and links to relevant GitLab documentation.

https://gitlab.com/gromacs/gromacs/-/issues/3617

On a related note, it should now be possible (for some developers manually) to trigger pipelines for forks on our GitLab Runner infrastructure. https://gitlab.com/help/ci/merge_request_pipelines/index.md#create-pipelines-in-the-parent-project-for-merge-requests-from-a-forked-project

Best,
Eric