This one weird trick speeds up every build!

[alxndrsn]

Softer alternative to #532

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Closes #531

Related:

• man-db trigger severely stalls package installation on ubuntu-24.04 runners actions/runner#4030
• Disable man-db dpkg trigger actions/runner-images#10977

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• Not applicable

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[alxndrsn]

@garethbowen this is the alternative approach you suggested at #532 (review)

As you suggest, this does seem like a lower-risk approach.

[garethbowen]

Sold.

My next thought is... why isn't this run for every build? It's not like man is going to be useful in GHA. Is it worth doing everywhere to protect against the next package with a long man rebuild?

[alxndrsn]

Is it worth doing everywhere to protect against the next package with a long man rebuild?

I think that would be ideal, and I think that's what actions/runner-images#10977 is asking too 🤷

An alternative approach would be a setup-playwright action which combines:

run: sudo bash -ec 'echo "set man-db/auto-update false" | debconf-communicate; dpkg-reconfigure man-db'

with

run: 'yarn playwright install ${{ matrix.browser }} --with-deps'

Something like:

- uses: actions/setup-playwright
  with:
    browser: ${{ matrix.browser }}

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Ideally that action could then be shared across projects in @getodk, but might need to handle yarn vs npm differences, and maybe not worth the effort vs copy+paste+modify for each project.

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Microsoft (maintainers of playwright) previously published: https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-github-action, but it's now deprecated.