[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #40407: Trim the test matrix on Travis for older branches

[WordPress Trac]

#40407: Trim the test matrix on Travis for older branches
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 Reporter:  johnbillion       |      Owner:
     Type:  task (blessed)    |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal            |  Milestone:  4.8
Component:  Build/Test Tools  |    Version:  3.8
 Severity:  normal            |   Keywords:
  Focuses:                    |
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 During patch releases (eg. security and maintenance releases), the time
 that it takes for the Travis builds to run is a substantial hindrance to
 shipping and backporting quickly.

 Given that backports go to 11 branches now, and each branch takes ~20
 minutes to test on Travis, that's around 3.5 hours to wait before
 releasing, and that's not including all the time wasted cancelling builds
 on branches with multiple commits.

 It's time we trimmed down the test matrix on older branches to remove the
 PHP 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, hhvm, nightly, and non-latest-7.x jobs from the branch
 builds. That leaves the JS job, and the 5.2, 5.6, 5.6 memcached, and
 latest 7.x.

 The likelihood of a patch release breaking on a version of PHP between 5.3
 and 5.5 but not affecting 5.2 or 5.6+ is very low. The risk is greatly
 outweighed by the benefit of faster and less stressful builds.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/40407>
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