GitHub Actions Experiments

[lhl2617]

Out of interest I experimented with GitHub actions--here's a PR done with GH actions in my fork: https://github.com/lhl2617/openbmc/pull/189

There are definitely multiple issues with GH actions, but if in the future we decide to move from CircleCI to GH Actions (unlikely as of now) I hope this can be of help.

GH Actions Advantages:

• Currently free for public repos
• Nice GH integration, decent docs and easier to learn compared to CircleCI/TravisCI

GH Actions Disadvantages:

• Currently only has Linux machines equivalent to circle-ci small, but larger machines are in beta for GitHub AE: https://docs.github.com/en/github-ae@latest/actions/using-github-hosted-runners/about-ae-hosted-runners#hardware-specifications
• Not so uncommon downtime--this year I was met with two half-days of downtime (GH actions is still relatively new after all)
• Significantly slower than Circle-CI as of now: https://github.community/t/speed-comparison-github-actions-takes-3m-32s-circle-ci-takes-12s/17780/11 (Download sstate cache takes ages for GH actions as well--the network seems to be subpar).

Outstanding issues with https://github.com/lhl2617/openbmc/pull/189

• do_lint_cppcheck oand check-build-required has circle-ci deps
• need --user root override in options to get around permission denied errors--there must be a better workaround?
• git in crops/poky:latest too old for actions/checkout@v2

[lhl2617]

Still too many problems with GH actions--closing for now