fix: don't build storage access test runtime

[gilescope]

Overview

Remove frame-storage-access-test-runtime from the runtime's [build-dependencies]. This polkadot-sdk test crate was accidentally included in PR #42 (Federated Authority, Sep 2025) — likely copy-pasted from a polkadot-sdk template. It was never imported in build.rs or any Rust code.

Because it had default-features = true (which enables substrate-wasm-builder), it built its own separate WASM runtime on every release build, adding ~2.5 minutes of compile time and pulling in 179 unnecessary crates including the entire parachain/cumulus/XCM stack — none of which belong in a sidechain node.

Build time improvement (clean release build):

Metric	Before	After	Improvement
Build time	9m 18s	6m 55s	-25.6%
Crate count	1,791	1,612	-179

No functional changes. The runtime WASM output is identical.

🗹 TODO before merging

• Ready

📌 Submission Checklist

• Changes are backward-compatible (or flagged if breaking)
• Pull request description explains why the change is needed
• Self-reviewed the diff
• I have included a change file, or skipped for this reason: change only affects build time, no product impact
• If the changes introduce a new feature, I have bumped the node minor version
• Update documentation (if relevant)
• Updated AGENTS.md if build commands, architecture, or workflows changed
• No new todos introduced

🧪 Testing Evidence

Clean release build with cargo build --timings -p midnight-node --release:

• Before: 9m 18s, 1,791 crates, frame-storage-access-test-runtime build script (run) at 122.8s

• After: 6m 55s, 1,612 crates, no frame-storage-access-test-runtime or parachain-related entries

• WASM runtime artifacts produced correctly (compact, compressed variants)

• Additional tests are provided (if possible)

🔱 Fork Strategy

• Node Runtime Update
• Node Client Update
• Other:
• N/A

Links

• Introduced accidentally in: PR Feat: Implement Federated Authority #42 (commit 464f1a78, "done")

[github-actions]

KICS version: v2.1.19

Category Results CRITICAL 0 HIGH 0 MEDIUM 47 LOW 3 INFO 59 TRACE 0 TOTAL 109	Metric Values Files scanned 26 Files parsed 26 Files failed to scan 0 Total executed queries 73 Queries failed to execute 0 Execution time 11

[NachoPal]

Ok, I got to the bottom of why it was needed:

1. frame-storage-access-test-runtime is a dependency of frame-benchmarking-cli which is needed for running the benchmarks.
2. Without it, cargo build -r --features runtime-benchmarks will not compile
3. The reason we didn't notice it wasn't compiling is because in the check-rust Earthly target, RUN cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets --features runtime-benchmarks -- -D warnings was running with ENV SKIP_WASM_BUILD=1 which is wrong (we need the wasm runtime for the benchmarks)
4. frame-storage-access-test-runtime is used for benchmark storage subcommand, which we ideally should want to use.
5. The good news is frame-storage-access-test-runtime wasm is only used for benchmark storage --mode validate-block which is only useful for parachains block validations.
6. Conclusion is we can remove the dependency and build the node skipping that particular wasm build:

SKIP_FRAME_STORAGE_ACCESS_TEST_RUNTIME_WASM_BUILD=1 cargo build --release --features runtime-benchmarks -p midnight-node

[gilescope]

Is SKIP_FRAME_STORAGE_ACCESS_TEST_RUNTIME_WASM_BUILD a thing? I don't see any reference to it in the polkadot repo?

[NachoPal]

Is SKIP_FRAME_STORAGE_ACCESS_TEST_RUNTIME_WASM_BUILD a thing? I don't see any reference to it in the polkadot repo?

https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/blob/master/substrate/utils/wasm-builder/src/builder.rs#L285

[ozgb]

CI Error looks unrelated: