Removing build dependency to VSS

[erikbosch]

This PR is testing out the possibility to remove the VSS-tools to VSS dependency in CI.

Background

Today we have a circular dependency in CI:

• VSS-tools checks that it can "successfully" (i.e. without crashing or errors reported) transform latest master of the VSS standard catalog. For this it uses a makefile in vss repo
• VSS checks that the vss-tools version referenced as submodulecan "successfully" (i.e. without crashing or errors reported) transform the current PR of the VSS standard

This causes problems when the tool interfaces (e.g. command line parameters) or VSS-syntax has changed, and it could also give problems if working on an "older" branch (e.g. maintenance branch) of VSS-tools, as we then maybe do not need to support what exist in latest master in VSS

Proposal

Let us skip the dependency from VSS-tools to VSS standard catalog. We now have a reasonable set of test cases in this repo so the need to test against the standard catalog on each PR is limited. We off course still need to check that VSS standard catalog and VSS-tools are compatible, but this should be driven by VSS. I.e. when needed and before each VSS release the VSS repo shall integrate a new VSS-tools version. If someone do a major change to VSS-tools it is recommended that they test in their local environment that VSS standard catalog and VSS-tools are compatible, but compatibility will be checked in CI first when VSS updates reference to VSS-tools.

If we do not rely on VSS we cannot use the VSS Makefile. Instead we need to explicitly run the parts from the Makefile that we see as relevant. For now that is considered to be the building of the binary library and running tests.

[erikbosch]

Meeting notes:

• Please review/discuss until next meeting