ci: Turn CentOS config into Alpine musl config #33480

maflcko · 2025-09-25T12:30:00Z

Historically, the centos task was added to add CI coverage for old packages and 32-bit depends builds, but both are now covered by different tasks.

The CentOS task aligns with Ubuntu/Debian CI tasks in terms of libc usage, but (slightly) differs in package naming and update philosophy. I am not aware of the task ever discovering a centos-related issue, so it seems fine to recycle it into an Alpine Linux task.

The main difference would be that musl libc is now used. Also, busybox is used in Alpine, so in theory the busybox install could be removed from the arm CI task in the future.

Packaging considerations: All packages should roughly be the same (gcc remains at version 14, python remains at version 3.12, etc). Also, all packages are from the Alpine main track, coming with 2 years of support. The only exception is the py3-pip package (https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages?name=py3-pip&branch=v3.22&repo=&arch=riscv64) from the community track, however, I don't expect any issues arising from that.

DrahtBot · 2025-09-25T12:30:06Z

The following sections might be updated with supplementary metadata relevant to reviewers and maintainers.

Code Coverage & Benchmarks

For details see: https://corecheck.dev/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls/33480.

Reviews

See the guideline for information on the review process.

Type	Reviewers
ACK	janb84, willcl-ark
Concept ACK	RandyMcMillan, dergoegge

If your review is incorrectly listed, please react with 👎 to this comment and the bot will ignore it on the next update.

Conflicts

Reviewers, this pull request conflicts with the following ones:

#bitcoin-core/gui/896 (rpcconsole: display signet challenge by RandyMcMillan)
#33514 (Clear out space on centos job by willcl-ark)
#31349 (ci: detect outbound internet traffic generated while running tests by vasild)

If you consider this pull request important, please also help to review the conflicting pull requests. Ideally, start with the one that should be merged first.

willcl-ark · 2025-09-25T12:31:04Z

Concept ACK

maflcko · 2025-09-25T14:24:56Z

Interesting side note: Looks like most unit tests are minimally faster on Alpine, except for the secp tests:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/actions/runs/18007497948/job/51231174310?pr=33480#step:9:3415:

148/150 Test   #4: secp256k1_noverify_tests .............   Passed   38.88 sec
149/150 Test   #5: secp256k1_tests ......................   Passed   57.62 sec

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/actions/runs/18007193787/job/51230198016#step:9:2625 :

145/150 Test   #4: secp256k1_noverify_tests .............   Passed   12.96 sec
148/150 Test   #5: secp256k1_tests ......................   Passed   26.79 sec

janb84 · 2025-09-25T14:48:27Z

So Centos as CI task was not added to give good RHEL distro / Enterprise Linux support ?

maflcko · 2025-09-25T15:18:46Z

So Centos as CI task was not added to give good RHEL distro / Enterprise Linux support ?

No, as mentioned in the pull description. For reference, the history was:

ci: Add CentOS 7 build #17635: Add centos 7 CI to check "old packages".
ci: Combine 32-bit build with CentOS 7 build #17900: Drop the "old packages" and use depends (32-bit).
ci: Turn CentOS task into native one #31651: Use native depends instead of 32-bit.
ci: Bump centos stream 10 #31593: Bump to stream10, so that even the build system is using recent packages (gcc, cmake, python), to avoid warnings and errors. Also, ...
ci: Move DEBUG=1 to centos task #32560: ... to be able to run a GCC hardened debug build with a recent GCC.

janb84

Concept ACK fa6b2e9

This PR introduces more libc diversity in the CI pipeline (in the form of using Alpine), which is welcome.

Not completely agreeing with this PR sentence;

"So basically, the centos task is similar to all the Ubuntu/Debian CI tasks, possibly with some packages named slightly differently. "

Yes and No; (Risk of being too much of a nitpicker.)

Yes from a Libc perspective; Centos is glibc and Debian is also glibc
No from a distro philosophy; Ubuntu/Debian and RHEL distro's are different in philosophy REHL is slower, more enterprise-focused. But do we need it as a CI step ? no as you mentioned, it does not give us new information.

There for this seems like a good improvement.

Also thanks for the extensive answer.

maflcko · 2025-09-25T16:20:06Z

nitpicker

No worries. Happy to adjust the pull description, if you have any suggestions I could take over.

maflcko · 2025-09-25T17:05:31Z

Also confirmed that the gcc debug mode works on alpine: https://github.com/maflcko/bitcoin-core-with-ci/actions/runs/18013008390/job/51250509812#step:8:2473 :

/usr/include/c++/14.2.0/debug/vector:508:
In function:
    constexpr std::debug::vector<_Tp, _Allocator>::reference std::
    debug::vector<_Tp, _Allocator>::operator[](size_type) [with _Tp = 
    CTxOut; _Allocator = std::allocator<CTxOut>; reference = CTxOut&; 
    size_type = long unsigned int]

Error: attempt to subscript container with out-of-bounds index 3, but 
container only holds 3 elements.

Objects involved in the operation:
    sequence "this" @ 0x7fffcfe17008 {
      type = std::debug::vector<CTxOut, std::allocator<CTxOut> >;
    }

janb84 · 2025-09-26T08:26:10Z

nitpicker

No worries. Happy to adjust the pull description, if you have any suggestions I could take over.

How about something like this:

The CentOS task aligns with Ubuntu/Debian CI tasks in terms of libc usage, but (slightly) differs in package naming and update philosophy. I am not aware of the task ever discovering a centos-related issue, so it seems fine to recycle it into an Alpine Linux task.

maflcko · 2025-09-26T08:29:57Z

thx, edited description

janb84

ACK fa6b2e9

This PR introduces more libc diversity in the CI pipeline (in the form of using Alpine), which is welcome.

RandyMcMillan · 2025-09-27T21:08:19Z

Concept ACK

RandyMcMillan · 2025-09-28T16:01:20Z

tACK

It may be worth mentioning that this change fixed an issue (I was unable to isolate) on CentOS using HexStr() formatting a custom signetchallenge to display in the rpcconsole.

maflcko · 2025-09-29T06:08:29Z

It may be worth mentioning that this change fixed an issue (I was unable to isolate) on CentOS using HexStr() formatting a custom signetchallenge to display in the rpcconsole.

That is unrelated to both this pull request and your pull request, see #33293.

willcl-ark

ACK fa6b2e9

Alpine/musl feels much more useful to me than a frozen-in-time CentOS build.

Not tested locally as I'm a bit bandwidth-contrained at the moment, but the code changes and CI look good to me.

ci/test/00_setup_env_native_alpine_musl.sh

.github/workflows/ci.yml

Per bitcoin#33480 (comment)

janb84

reACK 444409f

changes since last ACK:

changed container size to md. CI still works with this size. ✅

willcl-ark

ACK 444409f

This took 29 minutes for an alpine depends, gui build, with no docker/ccache/depends caches (as no merges to master yet) which seems in line with other jobs.

maflcko · 2025-10-02T15:08:27Z

Another (tiny) benefit of this pull request is that the task will now finally be able to run on my riscv64 box (modulo the two python wheels)

dergoegge · 2025-10-04T07:26:47Z

Concept ACK

ci: Turn centos config into alpine musl config

fa6b2e9

DrahtBot added the Tests label Sep 25, 2025

janb84 reviewed Sep 25, 2025

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janb84 reviewed Sep 26, 2025

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DrahtBot requested a review from willcl-ark September 26, 2025 08:48

DrahtBot mentioned this pull request Sep 26, 2025

ci: detect outbound internet traffic generated while running tests #31349

Open

RandyMcMillan mentioned this pull request Sep 28, 2025

rpcconsole: display signet challenge bitcoin-core/gui#896

Open

willcl-ark approved these changes Sep 29, 2025

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ci/test/00_setup_env_native_alpine_musl.sh Show resolved Hide resolved

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willcl-ark mentioned this pull request Sep 29, 2025

ci: GHA fallback centos task runs out of space #33293

Open

ci: Reduce Alpine musl task to md runner size

444409f

Per bitcoin#33480 (comment)

janb84 reviewed Sep 29, 2025

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DrahtBot requested a review from willcl-ark September 29, 2025 10:48

willcl-ark approved these changes Sep 29, 2025

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janb84 mentioned this pull request Oct 1, 2025

Clear out space on centos job #33514

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ci: Turn CentOS config into Alpine musl config #33480

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ci: Turn CentOS config into Alpine musl config #33480

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