Port CI to Github Actions

[jtniehof]

The CI is based on CircleCI. We're on GitHub and the community is moving pretty heavily into GHA, plus I'm becoming much more familiar with it.

Closure condition

Current CircleCI tests (unit test and postgres tests) are ported to GHA, CircleCI disconnected completely from dbp.

[namurphy]

I fully support this!

Has there been any discussion of using a task runner like Nox to facilitate performing checks using the same environments both locally and in CI?

Using Nox requires setting up noxfile.py in the repo root directory and defining sessions. For example, a session for running pytest would look like:

import nox

@nox.session
def tests(session):
    session.install("pytest", ".")
    session.run("pytest")

I really like Nox since we can use Python to construct the commands that get run. There are also handy ways to install dependency groups defined in pyproject.toml prior to running tests, and to parametrize different versions of Python.

If this sounds like something worth trying, there's a good chance I'd be able to submit a PR with an example noxfile.py, along with a GitHub workflow file to run the Nox session.

[jtniehof]

I was being all optimistic about having the CircleCI work, merging the latest PR, and then migrating to GHA. I think this is going to be more "burn CircleCI down and start over with GHA".

I'm not opposed to nox, but it cuts a little against two personal principles

1. Keep tooling fairly light and simple
2. Go ahead and run tests in environments that we think are the same but aren't so we can find those annoying bugs. I don't want to be rolling dice on the CI, for example, but running my local tests in the same environment where I'm working is a very nice way to find surprises....

[namurphy]

I was being all optimistic about having the CircleCI work, merging the latest PR, and then migrating to GHA. I think this is going to be more "burn CircleCI down and start over with GHA".

Agreed! 🔥

1. Keep tooling fairly light and simple

One of the main advantages of Nox is that it makes it precisely 34% less horrible to set up GitHub workflows, and very roughly 74% less horrible to debug GitHub workflows...in particular since it lets us run tests the same way locally and somewhere around the World Wide Web™. We can get Nox sessions working locally, and then set up a GitHub workflow to run the Nox sessions.

2. Go ahead and run tests in environments that we think are the same but aren't so we can find those annoying bugs. I don't want to be rolling dice on the CI, for example, but running my local tests in the same environment where I'm working is a very nice way to find surprises.  

Setting up Nox sessions for tests doesn't prevent us from running tests ourselves. But it does make a lot of other things easier, like being able to run tests in many different versions of Python (with their test parametrization capabilities inspired by pytest). Perhaps I could do a prototype pull request? and i just volunteered for more work again didn't i

[jtniehof]

Less heinous debugging of GHA is a real plus....