ci: Make "fast-ci" the default validate configuration

We are trying out a lighter weight validation pipeline where by default we just test on 5 platforms:

* x86_64-deb10-slow-validate
* windows
* x86_64-fedora33-release
* aarch64-darwin
* aarch64-linux-deb10

In order to enable the "full" validation pipeline you can apply the full-ci label which will enable all the validation pipelines.

All the validation jobs are still run on a marge batch.

The goal is to reduce the overall CI capacity so that pipelines start faster for MRs and marge bot batches are faster.

mentioned in commit a75bdc4f

mentioned in commit c5058a91

mentioned in commit e7f26e09

mentioned in merge request !10907 (closed)

Great.

Where is the list of "labels", and how you can apply them, laid out? I could not see it here: https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/wikis/Contributing-a-Patch

I put down the labels now, which doesn't actually reflect the current state of things but where we hope to get to in the next week/few weeks.

Thanks. You say on that contributing page

There are a few labels that you can apply to modify the configurations which are tested on a merge request pipeline.

but how do you "apply" a label? With the labels in the right hand menu column? I think so, and have modified the text.

But I vaguely recall some [fast ci] annotation you could put... in the title perhaps? Is that still a thing? Is it precisely equivalent?

You are thinking of [skip ci] which is a gitlab feature (https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/pipelines/#skip-a-pipeline) which we don't want people to use.

Ahh thanks.

Sometimes I want to push to the server when my MR is in form that doesn't even compile. (E.g moving between office and home) Is there a way to say "don't bother with CI at all"?

I have also

• Added section numbers
• Moved "Draft status" and "Backports" from the (overlapping) merge request page to this contributing a patch page. In doing so I made minor changes; pls check.

I wonder if the "Draft status" section could be shorter? E.g. we no longer actively change MRs to Draft, do we?

All that leaves merge request page with little content. Shall we move the rest? I think it'd make sense to have it all in one place.

Gitlab can't do table-of-contents, can it?

mentioned in commit 808b55cf

closed with commit 808b55cf

mentioned in merge request !10919 (closed)