Zombie dependency json11 breaks macOS CI

[hartwork]

Hi, thanks for sharing this exciting project! 🙏

It has come to my attention that macOS CI started failing because zombie dependency json11 contains line cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8) in their build system. Are there plans to migrate off of json11? Use of CMake's ExternalProject PATCH_COMMAND could be a workaround for an alternative.

Best, Sebastian

[AlexDenisov]

Yes, the plans are there, but the timeline is not clear.
Current CI setup is breaking all the time unfortunately, so I'm trying another approach to be more independent from the underlying OS.
Soon it should get green again.

[hartwork]

@AlexDenisov I'd be curious to learn about what things keep breaking it and how you intend to address that kind of breakage, if you have time to elaborate.

[AlexDenisov]

The biggest issue on macOS is homebrew and sometimes unstable GH runners.

The current plan is to switch to a more reproducible build system (bazel in this case #1097), to not rely on the underlying OS. It brings some other challenges for sure, but I expect things to be more stable from the maintenance point of view.

[hartwork]

The biggest issue on macOS is homebrew and sometimes unstable GH runners.

Rolling-relaese Homebrew makes perfect sense, by unstable GH runners you mean slight changes to their official images? (If so, GH rejected my request to pin image versions at actions/runner-images#13034 unfortunately. So that kind of flakiness is by design (which is a bit of a joke to me, frankly).)

The current plan is to switch to a more reproducible build system (bazel in this case #1097), to not rely on the underlying OS. It brings some other challenges for sure, but I expect things to be more stable from the maintenance point of view.

Do you have a link on the kind or nature of gain in reproducibility that you expect from Bazel over CMake? It sounds like I may be missing something. Thanks!

[AlexDenisov]

Do you have a link on the kind or nature of gain in reproducibility that you expect from Bazel over CMake? It sounds like I may be missing something. Thanks!

@hartwork IMO, the most important is this one https://bazel.build/basics/hermeticity.
While Mull can't be built in a fully hermetic environment (at least without a significant investment in the build system), it gives much more control than what CMake has to offer.

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@hartwork I'm closing this issue since macOS CI is no longer broken, but I'm happy to answer any other questions you may have.