Another week, another update.
Major milestones are around packaging. @evgeni has started to push out Smart Proxy & plugin packages. The Puppet module for foreman_proxy already passes its test suite (Support EL9 by ekohl · Pull Request #823 · theforeman/puppet-foreman_proxy · GitHub) so we can at least say that various packages install and the service starts. Work continues by doing the same for content proxies (Support EL9 by evgeni · Pull Request #469 · theforeman/puppet-foreman_proxy_content · GitHub). That’s green, so once the Katello packages have been published (add el9 to katello repository generation/publishing by evgeni · Pull Request #403 · theforeman/jenkins-jobs · GitHub) it should be good to go. Those test suites are limited in testing the actual functionality, but are a solid foundation to build on. allow overriding the server/proxy OS by evgeni · Pull Request #1752 · theforeman/forklift · GitHub allows spinning up an EL8 Foreman server with an EL9 content proxy. There @evgeni has found some functionality that doesn’t work (like SELinux issues), but things are coming together.
In doing this work it was a problem because foreman-debug and katello-debug need to Foreman to be built. Instead we’ve made those optional (Drop requirement on foreman-debug by evgeni · Pull Request #10187 · theforeman/foreman-packaging · GitHub Don't require katello-debug by evgeni · Pull Request #10257 · theforeman/foreman-packaging · GitHub do not install katello-debug by default by evgeni · Pull Request #468 · theforeman/puppet-foreman_proxy_content · GitHub). The functionality should be in sosreport so this also allows slightly smaller installations for end users.
On the Foreman side @ofedoren has started to properly analyze the issue we had. Run GHA on Ruby 3.0 (alternative 2.0) by ofedoren · Pull Request #9989 · theforeman/foreman · GitHub uses the same constructor method signature that Rails’ activerecord has so it’s promising for a proper fix.
Other than that Install NPM packages & compile webpack by ekohl · Pull Request #18 · theforeman/actions · GitHub was merged so now Foreman plugins should get good test coverage when they use the reusable action. That is now a significant milestone in Convert Foreman & plugins continuous integration to GitHub Actions - #4 by ekohl. @akumari has started to expand our investigation in Verify it works with all plugins · Issue #1 · theforeman/actions · GitHub, but even that is still incomplete. @ekohl will put out a call to plugin maintainers to collaborate on this.
One remaining issue that shows up in most plugins is running of tests from Foreman core in a plugin (always execute access_permissions_test from Foreman core by evgeni · Pull Request #16 · theforeman/actions · GitHub). This isn’t an issue in Jenkins, because that runs the entire Foreman test suite (to prevent regressions). GitHub actions only runs the plugin’s but some do run some tests from core. This needs a resolution for plugins using GitHub Actions today.
Another that came up is installation of chromedriver (Rewrite GHA workflow using reusable actions by archanaserver · Pull Request #381 · theforeman/foreman_puppet · GitHub). It’s unknown how Foreman itself does this today (it doesn’t install Chrome, so does it even run at all?). There’s also a PR open for a remote webdriver (Fixes #36978 - Add possibility to use remote webdriver by dosas · Pull Request #9952 · theforeman/foreman · GitHub) which may allow us to use a webdriver container and connect to that instead.
To know how far we are in the migration it would be good to add CI descriptions to Foreman landscape and @evgeni will take a look.
It also came up that we may want a reusable action for Smart Proxy plugins (add proxy plugin workflow by evgeni · Pull Request #27 · theforeman/actions · GitHub) but that’s considered low priority now.
Lastly, it’s noted that we will need to deal with the webpack update (https://github.com/theforeman/foreman/pull/9834) if we want to run on EL9. @ekohl will reach out to @MariaAga how we can get that merged as soon as possible.