Feedback-ID: id4a34324:Fastmail
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2026 16:55:14 -0400
From: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Heads Up: cirrus-ci is shutting down June 1st
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Hi,

As the subject says, cirrus-ci, which cfbot uses to run CI and that one can
(for now) enable on one's own repository, is shutting down.

https://cirruslabs.org/ burries the lede a bit, but it has further down:
  "Cirrus CI will shut down effective Monday, June 1, 2026."

I can't say I'm terribly surprised, they had been moving a lot slower in the
last few years.

The shutdown window is pretty short, so we'll have to do something soon. Glad
that it didn't happen a few months ago, putting the shutdown before the
feature freeze. This is probably close to the least bad time it could happen
with a short window.


I think having cfbot and CI that one could run on ones own repository, without
sending a mail to the community, has improved the development process a lot.
So clearly we're going to have to do something.  I certainly could not have
done stuff like AIO without it.


I'd be interested in feedback about how high folks value different aspects:

1) CI software can be self hosted

   E.g. to prevent at least the cfbot case from being unpredictably abandoned
   again.


2) CI software is open source

   E.g. out of a principled stance, or control concerns.


3) CI runs quickly

   This matters e.g. for accepting running in containers and whether it's
   crucial to be able to have our images with everything pre-installed.


4) CI tests as many operating systems as possible

   A lot of system just support linux, plenty support macos, some support
   windows. Barely any support anything beyond that.


5) CI can be enabled on one's own repositories

   Cfbot obviously allows everyone to test patches some way, but sending patch
   sets to the list just to get a CI run obviously gets noisy quite fast.

   There are plenty of open source CI solutions, but clearly it's not viable
   for everyone to set that up for themselves. Plenty providers do allow doing
   so, but the overlap of this, open source (2), multiple platforms (4) is
   small if it exists.


6) There need to be free credits for running at least some CI on one's own
   repository

   This makes the overlapping constraints mentioned in 5) even smaller.

   There are several platforms that do provide a decent amount of CI for a
   monthly charge of < 10 USD.


7) Provide CI compute for "well known contributors" for free in their own
   repositories

   An alternative to 6) - with some CI solutions - can be to add folks to some
   team that allows them to use community resources (which so far have been
   donated).  The problem with that is that it's administratively annoying,
   because one does need to be careful, or CI will be used to do
   cryptocurrency mining or such within a few days.


For some context about how much CI we have been running, here's the daily
average for cfbot and postgres/postgres CI:

- 1464 core hours (full cores, not SMT), all CI jobs use 4 cores

- 396 core hours of which were windows (visible due to the licensing cost)

- 40 GB of artifacts

- 83 GB of artifacts downloaded externally

- doesn't include macos, which I can't track as easily, due to being self
  hosted runners, rather than running on GCP, which provided the above numbers


Greetings,

Andres Freund