Add PAID_RUNNER_BUILD_DATA environment variable back to build workflow
#2563
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The build workflow produces builds for a range of target host architectures, including macOS Apple Silicon. This is done by running a native build in a machine of the target architecture. At the time the support for producing Apple Silicon builds was added to the workflow, use of GitHub-hosted Apple Silicon runner machines was charged by the minute (while use of the other runners is free). In order to avoid excessive expenses, the workflow was configured so that the Apple Silicon builds were only produced when absolutely necessary. This was done by defining two sets of job matrix arrays, one for jobs using free runners, and the other for jobs using paid runners. Due to the limitations of the GitHub Actions framework, it was necessary to use workflow environment variables for this purpose. Since that time, GitHub made free GitHub-hosted Apple Silicon runners available. When the workflow was adjusted to use that runner, the configuration for the Apple Silicon build job was moved to the free runner job matrix array. The system for supporting selective use of paid GitHub-hosted runners to produce builds was not removed at that time. This is reasonable since it is possible the need will arise for using paid runners at some point in the future (e.g., only legacy older versions of free macOS "Intel" runners are now provided and it is likely that even these will eventually be phased out forcing us to use the paid runner to produce builds for that target). However, the environment variable for the paid runner job matrix array data was removed. The absence of that variable made it very difficult to understand the workflow code for the system. For this reason, the environment variable is replaced, but empty of data. A comment is added to explain the reason for this.
per1234
added
type: enhancement
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Motivation
The build workflow produces builds for a range of target host architectures, including macOS Apple Silicon. This is done by running a native build in a machine of the target architecture.
At the time the support for producing Apple Silicon builds was added to the workflow (#2245), use of GitHub-hosted Apple Silicon runner machines was charged by the minute (while use of the other runners is free). In order to avoid excessive expenses, the workflow was configured so that the Apple Silicon builds were only produced when absolutely necessary. This was done by defining two sets of job matrix arrays, one for jobs using free runners, and the other for jobs using paid runners. Due to the limitations of the GitHub Actions framework, it was necessary to use workflow environment variables for this purpose.
Since that time, GitHub made free GitHub-hosted Apple Silicon runners available. When the workflow was adjusted to use that runner (#2513), the configuration for the Apple Silicon build job was moved to the free runner job matrix array. The system for supporting selective use of paid GitHub-hosted runners to produce builds was not removed at that time. This is reasonable since it is possible the need will arise for using paid runners at some point in the future (e.g., only legacy older versions of free macOS "Intel" runners are now provided and it is likely that even these will eventually be phased out forcing us to use the paid runner to produce builds for that target). However, the environment variable for the paid runner job matrix array data was removed. The absence of that variable made it very difficult to understand the workflow code for the system.
Change description
Replace the environment variable that was removed in #2513. A comment is added to explain the reason for this.
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