future.tests: Continuous Integration on GitHub Actions

We can use continuous integration (CI) services such as GitHub Action and Travis CI to automatically validate future backends via the future.tests test suite.

Here is an example of a .github/workflow/future.tests.yaml file that configures GitHub Actions to check several backends via the future.tests test suite.

on: [push, pull_request]

name: future_tests

jobs:
  future_tests:
    if: "! contains(github.event.head_commit.message, '[ci skip]')"    

    timeout-minutes: 30
    
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    name: future.plan=${{ matrix.future.plan }}

    strategy:
      fail-fast: false
      matrix:
        future:
          - { plan: 'cluster'                             }
          - { plan: 'multicore'                           }
          - { plan: 'multisession'                        }
          - { plan: 'sequential'                          }
          - { plan: 'future.batchtools::batchtools_local' }
          - { plan: 'future.batchtools::batchtools_bash'  }
          - { plan: 'future.callr::callr'                 }
          - { plan: 'future.mirai::mirai_multisession'    }
          - { plan: 'future.mirai::mirai_cluster'         }

    env:
      GITHUB_PAT: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
      R_REMOTES_NO_ERRORS_FROM_WARNINGS: true
      ## R CMD check
      _R_CHECK_MATRIX_DATA_: true
      _R_CHECK_CRAN_INCOMING_: false
      ## Specific to futures
      R_FUTURE_RNG_ONMISUSE: error
      
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - uses: r-lib/actions/setup-pandoc@v2

      - uses: r-lib/actions/setup-r@v2
        with:
          use-public-rspm: true

      - uses: r-lib/actions/setup-r-dependencies@v2
        with:
          extra-packages: |
            any::rcmdcheck
            any::remotes
            any::sessioninfo
            any::covr
          needs: check

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: |
          remotes::install_deps(dependencies = TRUE)
          install.packages(".", repos=NULL, type="source")
        shell: Rscript {0}

      - name: Session info
        run: |
          options(width = 100)
          pkgs <- installed.packages()[, "Package"]
          sessioninfo::session_info(pkgs, include_base = TRUE)
        shell: Rscript {0}
          
      - name: Install 'future.tests' and any backend R packages
        run: |
          remotes::install_cran("future.tests")
          remotes::install_github("HenrikBengtsson/future.tests", ref="develop")
          if (grepl("::", plan <- "${{ matrix.future.plan }}") && nzchar(pkg <- sub("::.*", "", plan))) install.packages(pkg)
        shell: Rscript {0}

      - name: Session info
        run: |
          options(width = 100)
          pkgs <- installed.packages()[, "Package"]
          sessioninfo::session_info(pkgs, include_base = TRUE)
        shell: Rscript {0}
    
      - name: Check future backend '${{ matrix.future.plan }}'
        run: |
          R CMD build --no-build-vignettes --no-manual . 
          R CMD INSTALL *.tar.gz 
          Rscript -e future.tests::check --args --test-plan=${{ matrix.future.plan }}

      - name: Upload check results
        if: failure()
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: ${{ runner.os }}-r${{ matrix.future.plan }}-results
          path: check

For real-world examples, see the GitHub repositories of future, future.batchtools, future.callr, and future.mirai.