Commits on Apr 28, 2020

1. Use macOS runners for Android instrumentation …

   After some time with GitHub Actions I do not see significant difference
   between GHA and CircleCI when running Android instrumentation tests on
   Linux hosts. Both are a complete pile of ██████-█████ ████, sadly.
   You can read more about sorrows of Android instrumentation here [1].
   
   Linux runners are able to run ARM emulator with API 24 which is so slow
   that it occasinally fails to boot. Hardware accelerated x86 are not
   available because KVM is not available on VMs offered by GitHub and
   CircleCI. In fact, x86 emulator on Linux *requires* KVM. API 24 is the
   last level which provides ARM emulator, it's all x86/AMD-64 after that.
   So using ARM & API 24 is a ticking time bomb, waiting for Google to
   deprecate and remove API 24 from SDK installers.
   
   On the other hand, macOS runners offered by GitHub support HAXM
   acceretion and are able to run x86 Android emulators. Thankfully,
   the author of the rant [1] has also written an Action which installs
   Android SDK and related stuff [2] which also supports macOS.
   
   Let's run out integration tests on macOS runners. They cost x10 compared
   to Linux ones, but thanks to Microsoft's generocity open-source projects
   can use them for free. I'll gratefully take up the offer.
   
   Also, remove caching of Gradle stuff and Android SDK. While then *do*
   download lots of crap from the Internet (~2 GB each), it appears that
   packing, uploading, downloading, and unpacking caches takes comparable
   amount of time so caching does not reduce build times. GitHub Actions
   bill by build time, not traffic. And Google's mirrors are usually
   available so there is no real reason to use caches in this situation.
   
   *fingers crossed*
   
   Let's see how this works. If it consistently shows better build times
   and stability, I'm going to remove Android integration from CircleCI and
   rely solely on GitHub Actions, because I'm tired of that job *constantly*
   failing due to this ███████ emulator not booting.
   
   [1]: https://dev.to/ychescale9/running-android-emulators-on-ci-from-bitrise-io-to-github-actions-3j76
   [2]: https://github.com/reactivecircus/android-emulator-runner

   

   ilammy committed Apr 28, 2020
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