I'd like to add jobs to the automatic testing of PRs to run the testsuite using slimmed installations provisioned by Galleon. But, we already run a lot of jobs for each PR, enough so that our CI can overburdened during busy times around deadlines. So I don't want to just add jobs. Instead I also propose to drop the Windows + JDK 8 jobs.
Galleon Testing
During our work on WildFly 18 I added the ability to run portions of the WildFly and WildFly Core testsuites with the tests executing against slimmed server installations provisioned by Galleon instead of against the complete installations normally used. The point of that was to get test coverage of those slimmed installations.
Currently we have nightly jobs that run the testsuite this way.[1] As we continue to evolve our set of Galleon layers, e.g. adding layers for MicroProfile specs, I want to be sure we catch problems before PRs get merged.
To run tests locally this way you pass -Dts.layers as an arg to maven.
Dropping Windows JDK 8 Jobs
If we'd drop something in order to free up resources for these Galleon jobs, the Windows JDK 8 ones seem a good choice. We'd still run PRs against Windows JDK 11, and we'd still run PRs against Linux JDK 8. I can't recall any situation where CI found a regression that was specific to the Windows + JDK 8 combination.
When CI gets overloaded during rush times, it's the Windows jobs that are most problematic. The Windows jobs take longer because the storage drives they use are slower. Plus we have fewer Windows agents. The effect is during a rush, overall CI for PRs ends up taking hours longer while we wait for Windows agents to come free and then run the job.