Support request for providing the TeX Live Docker images

[Marei Peischl]

Hi Paulo,

first of all: Thank you!

In case if it would be enough to offer a host for the runners I probably 
can help with that.

Best,

Marei

On 12.05.22 12:37, Paulo Roberto Massa Cereda wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> For a few years, we have been providing the more or less official TL 
> docker images at https://hub.docker.com/r/texlive/texlive (repository 
> at https://gitlab.com/islandoftex/images/texlive). This especially 
> includes the latest TeX Live from net installer (in four flavors: no 
> src/no doc tree, with src/no doc tree, no src/with doc tree, with 
> src/with doc tree) and historic images (i.e. from previous years' 
> final ISO images).
>
> Up to now, all these images and flavors have been built using GitLab 
> CI which was very easy to set up and use for us. However, as of this 
> year, TL has grown to a size where the GitLab provided capacities does 
> not allow us to build the latest TL image with src/with doc tree 
> anymore. And for historic images it even fails to build the barebones 
> ones even for as small ones as TL 2014.
>
> There are two properties of the GitLab runners that fail here:
>
> - The CI runners have a job timeout of 3 hours. Especially with 
> historic images where only few mirrors are available we regularly get 
> timeouts.
>
> - The CI runners are limited to approx. 20 GB of space. With all the 
> Docker setup this starts to fail when images reach approx. 5 GiB of 
> space which the `latest-doc-src` image (and actually the images with 
> documentation and sources of previous years) are reaching.
>
> So here we are looking for alternatives to continue providing these 
> images. Our Dockerfiles are fully functional, so it is really only a 
> matter of build capacity. We are open to all alternatives. The 
> essential two alternatives we have thought of:
>
> - setting up an own GitLab CI runner on some hardware (which hardware?)
> - build somewhere else (some server or GitHub actions or something 
> that copes with the large images).
>
> Essentially, what we need either way is longer job timeouts and more 
> available disk space (approx. 30–40 GB of free space for building). 
> RAM and network bandwidth are actually not a bottleneck because in 
> this kind of setup, we are mostly limited by the mirrors and TL 
> installation is primarily disk I/O-heavy.
>
> For both options outlined above we lack capacities. So we are looking 
> for help on that or advise on other options.
>
> Just to have it mentioned somewhere: Until we have found some kind of 
> replacement, we cannot continue providing all image flavors.
>
> If anyone has ideas how we can continue providing all Docker images or 
> would be willing to help us implement a new build infrastructure, we 
> are eagerly waiting for ideas.
>
> Greetings from the island!
>
> Cheerio,
>
> Paulo