[ add ] `EverythingDEPRECATED`?

[jamesmckinna]

Seeing some of the quite thorny issues that #3034 has brought up about on the one hand needing to retain deprecated modules/definitions, and on the other having to 'correct' it to keep up with changes which might otherwise invalidate such material...

... I wonder if we should add an Everything-style generated file which can be locally checked before pushing commits for remote checking, in the same way that README and Everything get checked as part of make test ...?

Cf. #2957 etc.

[JacquesCarette]

How would you see this working? I think you're suggesting something that makes sense, but I'm just not able to put all the pieces end-to-end in my head.

[jamesmckinna]

@JacquesCarette writes

How would you see this working? I think you're suggesting something that makes sense, but I'm just not able to put all the pieces end-to-end in my head.

So, at the risk of spelling out the 'obvious'... my current local pre-commit workflow is cut-down on a full make test to simply

• recheck EverythingSafe (mostly because I've only been working on safe modules...), moreover to do so locally from emacs, so that interactively I'm only rechecking the subgraph of the dependency graph which has actually changed...

But even with a full, but still local, make teststill only achieves on the current CI infrastructure

• (regenerate Everything* via GenerateEverything)
• recheck the READMEs (so this step covers @JacquesCarette 's comment on #3037, or does it?)
• recheck EverythingSafe
• recheck Everything

What's missing is the remote post-commit check of the deprecated modules (as much discussed already).

So my thought for a cut-down pre-commit testing cycle would be

• recheck EverythingSafe (again: interactively)
• recheck EverythingDEPRECATED (and now: ditto.)
  and indeed, regenerate this module as part of GenerateEverything... ;-)

Then the only gotchas post-commit would then arise from

• broken READMEs Add checks for defunct and orphaned READMEs to CI #3037
• failing tests (which I could avoid locally with make testsuite, but it's generally too time-expensive to be bothered...)

Or have I not yet properly internalised a/the correct mental model of our current CI workflows?

[JacquesCarette]

So deprecated modules don't get checked at all right now? That seems to be the implicit conclusion. I guess I should look into the guts of GenerateEverything to find out! And look at that, there is an explicit filter.

Our own process pretty much ensures that deprecated modules will bit-rot.

Thus now what I'm not understanding is why running the test suite would trigger these deprecated modules?!?

[jamesmckinna]

My understanding is that the CI scripts do recheck the deprecated modules, but that make test does not. So the problem might be that the two testing regimes have diverged. The OP offers one path to reconciling them... not necessarily the only available one!