Fantastic improvement to the project — huge thanks to Mick and the whole team for making this happen!
Jaydeep On Thu, Aug 28, 2025 at 8:54 AM Štefan Miklošovič <smikloso...@apache.org> wrote: > Great experience so far, it "just works". My primary CI was Circle CI > until now around which I have developed a lot of custom scripting but > seeing this I think I will gravitate towards pre-ci from now on. What I > especially like is the overall responsiveness of this Jenkins instance, > post-commit Jenkins CI is way slower, loading a lot. This just reacts > instantly. > > On Wed, Aug 27, 2025 at 11:50 PM Mick <m...@apache.org> wrote: > >> >> tl;dr >> I am super excited to share with you all the availability of >> https://pre-ci.cassandra.apache.org , made possible from a very generous >> donation by Amazon. Using AWS donated credits we now have a fast >> open-source CI system for pre-commit testing. This is intended primarily >> for committers (and trusted contributors) that do not have access to a >> company-private CI system. Contact me off-list if that's you. >> >> … >> This huge donation from Amazon and builds on years of work on our CI and >> testing scripts, accumulating in CASSANDRA-18145¹. >> >> The project now has an AWS account (controlled by ASF Infra), and into it >> Amazon has provided a significant amount of credits for the purpose of our >> pre-commit testing. >> >> In the C* project pre-commit CI has been a major hurdle and blocker to >> new contributors, unaffiliated committers, and generally getting patches >> committed. Too much of our momentum has been led by contributors and >> committers employed in companies that can pay to run their own in-house CI >> systems. It is not in the slightest their fault, nor their employers' >> priority, but it has held the project back from its potential as well as >> not being in the proper spirit of an open source project and community. >> >> Amazon has recognised this and stepped forward as a true champion of our >> open-source community, providing both the AWS credits, as well as time in >> helping setting it up, testing and documenting it. >> >> The work has also involved many steps and people the past five years! >> since that first mention of a "Stand-alone Pipeline Run"². This work has >> gone from having a standalone Jenkinsfile, testing images and scripts that >> can be used anywhere, both pre-commit and post-commit, to a Helm chart to >> deploy ci-cassandra.a.o Jenkins clones in any k8s cluster of your >> choosing. This has also included getting our CI pipeline generating >> aggregated test result artefact files that can easily be attached to jira >> tickets, and archived permanently. These objectives you can see listed in >> CASSANDRA-18137³. >> >> For all this special thanks goes out to Richa Mishra, Nishant Barola, >> Aleksandr Volochnev, Brandon Hsieh, Himanshu Jindal, Steve Mayszak, Dmitry >> Konstantinov, Maxim Muzafarov, Berenguer Blasi, David Capwell, Brandon >> Williams, Ekaterina Dimitrova, Henrik Ingo, Shankar Ramaswamy, Josh >> McKenzie, Stefan Miklosovic, Gavin McDonald and no doubt others I've >> forgotten! Yeah, it feels like almost everyone, it has been a journey! >> >> It is not perfect: there is (always) room for improvement; and for now I >> think next steps should be around further time+cost optimisations and >> pipeline configurability. I'm hoping folk can jump in and help with >> these. >> >> What is provided today is a way for everyone anywhere to immutably >> provision a ci-cassandra.a.o clone on k8s. You avoid any need to install, >> know or operate Jenkins (you do not even have to ever once open the Jenkins >> UI – see below) and you do not need to wait more than a few hours to run >> the "post-commit" pipeline with 140-200k tests. The correlation to >> pipeline time is now how many nodes your k8s can scale to (ofc limitations >> exist, but those fine details are other convo), and with the cluster >> scaling down to one node you get a cost-effective pay-what-you-use >> deployment. https://pre-ci.cassandra.apache.org runs on EKS, and >> another instance for DataStax employees ( >> http://ci-cassandra.infra.datastax.com ) has been in use on GKE for over >> a year now. We have a CI system that is relatively ops-free, has the same >> turnaround time as CircleCI and costs over an order of magnitude less. >> This has been designed for downstream C* products to be able to re-use, >> and indeed it is a setup that any project can easily use. >> >> The setup introduces repeatability in how we test. The Jenkinsfile, the >> docker images and the test scripts, are the same everywhere, including >> locally. Reproducing obscure failures in post-commit should be easier. >> >> If you would like to set up your own ci-cassandra clone, the docs for >> both GKE are found in-tree under .jenkins/k8s/ ,and the docs for EKS coming >> soon. >> >> >> There is a command line interface that can be used for both provisioning >> as well as everyday CI use. >> Some examples: >> ``` >> # Install the ci-cassandra helm chat in your current k8s context, >> creating the ci-cassandra clone >> >> .build/run-ci --only-setup >> >> # Run your current branch through CI with the skinny profile. >> # Waits til completion, and creates ci_summary*.html & >> results_details*.tar.xz files to attach to jira >> >> .build/run-ci --profile skinny >> >> # If you don't have kubectl access to the cluster, just specify the >> jenkins url and user >> >> .build/run-ci --profile skinny --url pre-ci.cassandra.apache.org --user >> myuser >> ``` >> >> >> Huge huge praise and thanks to Amazon here: they really deserve it, they >> have taken this over the finish line; but the opportunity deserves to >> repeat all our gratitudes to all the very significant >> ci-cassandra.apache.org donations that help us keep the project running: >> NetApp, DataStax, Huawei and iland. >> >> >> ¹) CASSANDRA-18145 – Run entire Cassandra Jenkins in any k8s (immutable >> provisioning) >> ²) https://lists.apache.org/thread/ch768l8y95npno9o9y130fjob1h675z8 >> ³) CASSANDRA-18137 – Repeatable ci-cassandra.a.o (Epic) >> >> >> >>
