Add test of meson upstream versions

[anarazel]

I'd like to have a (perpetual) branch that modifies .cirrus.yml to use a specific branch of meson for all tasks. Then I'd like to create a cirrus cron "job" that tests at least meson's master branch and the newest "minor release" branch on a regular basis.

A good starting point would be to add something like 5bac378 to a central place and use it in all tasks. It should use a variable to describe the specific repo + version to install though.

A second step will be to allow that variable to be set from a the cron job's definition. I don't know the precedence of cirrus variables between cron job and job definition, that might make it easier or harder.

[nbyavuz]

I implemented something like this: 5808e62. CI run shows it uses latest meson. You can override 'MESON_REPO' and 'MESON_BRANCH' variables from Cirrus CI repository settings page to set different repos and branches but I am not sure how to set them from cron job's definition.

Does something like that work?

[anarazel]

Yes, that's going in the right direction!

Why are you cloning meson on unix? You should be able to use use the "pip install git+https://github.com/meson/meson@master" approach there as well? Then all the meson invocations don't need to be modified.

The other aspect I'd like to see is for the branch to rebase itself onto postgres HEAD. Likely you'd need to git remote add, git fetch etc. to do that.

[nbyavuz]

Why are you cloning meson on unix? You should be able to use use the "pip install git+https://github.com/meson/meson@master" approach there as well? Then all the meson invocations don't need to be modified.

There are couple of unix instances and each one has different command for installing pip and meson.

[anarazel]

There are couple of unix instances and each one has different command for installing pip and meson.

Re pip: We don't already have pip installed in them? Or is the issue that the installed script wrappers are not in PATH?

Re meson: I don't see how the command for installing meson matters, given that we'd be installing it via pip?

I really would like to reduce the change to existing statements for this change, otherwise we'll constantly deal with conflicts...

[nbyavuz]

Re pip: We don't already have pip installed in them? Or is the issue that the installed script wrappers are not in PATH?

I checked only FreeBSD and pip wasn't installed. I need to double check whether it is related to PATH or not.

Re meson: I don't see how the command for installing meson matters, given that we'd be installing it via pip?

For the FreeBSD it was pip-{pip_version} but we can create symbolic links.

I think we can implement these stuff while creating the images.

[nbyavuz]

Re pip: We don't already have pip installed in them? Or is the issue that the installed script wrappers are not in PATH?

I checked only FreeBSD and pip wasn't installed. I need to double check whether it is related to PATH or not.

I double checked and confirmed pip wasn't installed on FreeBSD. I created a script and moved commands to the there for minimizing conflicts. It installs meson and rebases itself onto Postgres head.

Commit: 09a0a11
CI Run: https://cirrus-ci.com/build/6288442863124480

[anarazel]

Can you open a PR?

I'd still like to get rid of all the changes doing s/meson/${MESON}/ due to the likelihood of conflicts that introduces. I don't think they are required with your script approach?