runner-images VS GNU Emacs

So you want to create a quick-and-dirty GitHub actions that does only one thing and does it well, or glues together several actions, or simply to show off a bit at your next work interview. Here's how you can do it. Let me introduce you to composite GitHub actions, one of the three types that are there (the other are JavaScript GHAs or container-based GHAs) and maybe one of the most widely unknown. However, they have several things going for them. First, they have low latency: no need to download a container or to set up some JS environment). Second, they are relatively easy to set up: they can be self-contained, with everything needed running directly on the description of the GitHub action. Third, you can leverage all the tools installed on the runner like bash, compilers, build tools... or Perl, which can be that and much more. Even being easy, it is even easier if you have a bit of boilerplate you can use directly or adapt to your own purposes. This is what has guided the creation of the template for a composite GitHub action based on Perl. It is quite minimalistic. But let me walk you through what it has got so that you can use it easier

I used the “ubuntu-latest” image which is Debian-based (with apt) and commonly available in the Github Actions workers, so it deploys very fast.

Yeah this is a good option if you'd like something to deploy yourself! You can also build an AMI from GitHub's upstream image definition (https://github.com/actions/runner-images/tree/main/images/ub...) if you'd like it to match what's available in GitHub-hosted Actions.

With Depot, we're moving towards deeper performance optimizations and observability than vanilla GitHub runners - we've integrated the runners with a cache storage cluster for instance, and we're working on deeper integration with the compute platform that we built for distributed container image builds - as well as expanding the types of builds we can process beyond Actions and Docker, for instance.

But different options will be better for different folks, and the `philips-labs` project is good at what it does.

Whoa, there's a lot of stuff in there [1] that gets installed straight from vendors, without pinning content checksums to a value known-good to Github.

I get it, they want to have the latest versions instead of depending on how long Ubuntu (or, worse, Debian) package maintainers take to package stuff into their mainline repositories... but this attack surface is nuts.

[1] https://github.com/actions/runner-images/tree/main/images/ub...

I had a similar experience with ARC (actions-runner-controller).

One of the machines in the fleet failed to sync its clock via NTP. Once a job X got scheduled to it, the runner pod failed authentication due to incorrect clock time, and then the whole ARC system started to behave incorrectly: job X was stuck without runners, until another workflow job Y was created, and then X got run but Y became stuck. There were also other wierd behaviors like this so I eventually rebuilt everything based on VMs and stopped using ARC.

Using VMs also allowed me to support the use of the official runner images [0], which is good for compatibility.

I feel more people would benefit from managed "self-hosted" runners, so I started DimeRun [1] to provide cheaper GHA runners for people who don't have the time/willingness to troubleshoot low-level infra issues.

[0]: https://github.com/actions/runner-images

Reminds me: Still waiting for native ARM support on GitHub Actions https://github.com/actions/runner-images/issues/5631

Used https://github.com/actions/runner-images to get the packages needed for Ubuntu 22.04 As the packer requires a builder, I used "null" builder to set it as localhost ref: https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/docs/builders/null (It was way difficult to figure it out the 1st time) I had to modify the .pkr.hcl file to pick my provisioners. I could not understand the use of /opt/hostedtoolcache folder (which I did later)

Emacs is a highly extensible, customizable, and powerful text editor primarily used in the field of software development and computer programming. Developed by Richard Stallman and initially released in the 1970s, Emacs has since evolved into a versatile platform offering a wide array of features beyond basic text editing.

gnu.org - contains everything you need to research his philosophy.

stallman.org - personal website, contains a lot of opinion, but I absolutely respect this man in all what he says.

emacs.org (redirects to https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) - his non-philosophical work, one of two mainstream console text editors.

Forever, there was a file included in stock Emacs, `spook.el`, which could be hooked up to automatically add random strings of "interesting" keywords to each of your email or Usenet messages (in signatures, or in headers like `X-Spook`).

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ma...

Looks like copyright date of 1988:

https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/lisp/play/...

https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/etc/spook....

Try `M-x spook RET` in an Emacs buffer.

If you want to spare a couple of detours, you probably could start with Emacs Org-mode according to Greenspun's eleventh rule: "Any sufficiently complicated PIM or note-taking program contains an ad hoc, informally specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Org mode."

Emacs: winget install GNU.Emacs

The whole cl-lib thing is a total disaster:

https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/lisp/emacs...

They added cl- as a prefix to each Common Lisp symbol.

FIRST is now called cl-first, CAAAR is now cl-caaar .

I would really prefer if GNU Emacs removes all Common Lisp functionality, instead of creating this really wacky stuff, with discussions about this topic every year.

Never too late to try! Take your time. Emacs will outlive us all. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

GNU Emacs is a versatile, open-source text editor that offers extensibility and customization—a sort of self-documenting real-time display editor. Our thanks for the suggestion go to CartanAnnullator.

Emacs