Creating a test build based on a release

JCF: Created Nov-26-2024

A very common idiom, for which there's built-in support in the v5 nightly build, is to create a test build where if a repo has a particular branch name (say, johnfreeman/new_name_for_class), the build uses that branch, otherwise it defaults to the develop branch. However, in the recent case of the NFDT_DEV_241126_A9 build, the default isn't the develop branch but rather the fddaq-v5.2.0 build itself. We do not have built-in support for this approach, but here are a few notes on how I modified daq-release on a temporary johnfreeman/modified_workflows_sandbox branch (head commit 4a17e64854cd67fda2db60ccb2e370e7af4e3c60) to get this to work:

The changes I made are the following:

• In build-nightly-release-alma9.yml, disabled the calls to checkout-daq-package.py, used to save a record of the code. Less than ideal, but those scripts don't support the idea of a mix of feature branches and tagged versions
• Hardwire in the fddaq-v5.2.0 release in the -i argument to make-release-repo.py: -i configs/${DET}daq/${DET}daq-v5.2.0/release.yaml

Note that in the above, I did this for all make-release-repo.py calls: coredaq, fddaq and Python

In fact, below you can see the git diff showing the changes:

diff --git a/.github/workflows/build-nightly-release-alma9.yml b/.github/workflows/build-nightly-release-alma9.yml
index e316913d..f0bab67a 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/build-nightly-release-alma9.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/build-nightly-release-alma9.yml
@@ -63,7 +63,7 @@ jobs:
           input_feature_branch=${{ github.event.inputs.feature-branch }}
           # For automatically triggered workflows where feature-branch is not set, fall back to default branch
           branch=${input_feature_branch:-"develop"}
-          daq-release/scripts/checkout-daq-package.py -i daq-release/configs/coredaq/coredaq-develop/release.yaml -a -o $DET_RELEASE_DIR/sourcecode -b $branch
+          #daq-release/scripts/checkout-daq-package.py -i daq-release/configs/coredaq/coredaq-v5.2.0/release.yaml -a -o $DET_RELEASE_DIR/sourcecode -b $branch
           daq-release/scripts/spack/build-release.sh $BASE_RELEASE_DIR $DET_RELEASE_DIR core $OS ${{ github.event.inputs.feature-branch }}
 
           cd $BASE_RELEASE_DIR/../
@@ -87,7 +87,7 @@ jobs:
           input_feature_branch=${{ github.event.inputs.feature-branch }}
           # For automatically triggered workflows where feature-branch is not set, fall back to default branch
           branch=${input_feature_branch:-"develop"}
-          daq-release/scripts/checkout-daq-package.py -i daq-release/configs/fddaq/fddaq-develop/release.yaml -a -o $DET_RELEASE_DIR/sourcecode
+          #daq-release/scripts/checkout-daq-package.py -i daq-release/configs/fddaq/fddaq-v5.2.0/release.yaml -a -o $DET_RELEASE_DIR/sourcecode -b $branch
           daq-release/scripts/spack/build-release.sh $BASE_RELEASE_DIR $DET_RELEASE_DIR fd $OS ${{ github.event.inputs.feature-branch }}
 
           cd $DET_RELEASE_DIR/../
diff --git a/scripts/spack/build-release.sh b/scripts/spack/build-release.sh
index 26ca7b4a..7f2f38c3 100755
--- a/scripts/spack/build-release.sh
+++ b/scripts/spack/build-release.sh
@@ -65,24 +65,22 @@ cd $DAQ_RELEASE_REPO
 spack_template_dir=spack-repos/${DET}daq-repo-template
 
 echo python3 scripts/spack/make-release-repo.py -u \
-  -i ${release_yaml} \
-  -t $spack_template_dir \
-  -r ${RELEASE_TAG} \
-  -o ${SPACK_AREA}/spack-installation \
-  ${base_release_arg} \
-  ${branch_arg} \
-  || exit 5
-
+     -i configs/${DET}daq/${DET}daq-v5.2.0/release.yaml \
+     -t $spack_template_dir \
+     -r ${RELEASE_TAG} \
+     -o ${SPACK_AREA}/spack-installation \
+     ${base_release_arg} \
+     ${branch_arg} \
+    || exit 5
 
 python3 scripts/spack/make-release-repo.py -u \
-  -i ${release_yaml} \
-  -t $spack_template_dir \
-  -r ${RELEASE_TAG} \
-  -o ${SPACK_AREA}/spack-installation \
-  ${base_release_arg} \
-  ${branch_arg} \
-  || exit 5
-
+     -i configs/${DET}daq/${DET}daq-v5.2.0/release.yaml \
+     -t $spack_template_dir \
+     -r ${RELEASE_TAG} \
+     -o ${SPACK_AREA}/spack-installation \
+     ${base_release_arg} \
+     ${branch_arg} \
+    || exit 5
 
 cd $SPACK_AREA
 
@@ -126,12 +124,12 @@ if [[ "$DET" == "fd" || "$DET" == "nd" ]]; then
     echo /usr/bin/python3 scripts/spack/make-release-repo.py \
         -o ${SPACK_AREA} \
         --pyvenv-requirements \
-        -i ${release_yaml}
+        -i configs/fddaq/fddaq-v5.2.0/release.yaml
 
     /usr/bin/python3 scripts/spack/make-release-repo.py \
         -o ${SPACK_AREA} \
         --pyvenv-requirements \
-        -i ${release_yaml} \
+        -i configs/fddaq/fddaq-v5.2.0/release.yaml \
         || exit 10
 
     python -m venv --prompt dbt ${SPACK_AREA}/.venv