[CMSO-1540] Feature request: option to run multidev:create that triggers the workflow and exits

[pwtyler]

From a recent thread in Pantheon community Slack—

Current behavior

multidev:create waits for the multidev creation operation to complete

Desired Behavior

an option that just instructs Pantheon to create a multidev environment and then exit, not continuously checks the status of the workflow.

Use case

When run from a github action or other CI workflow, the "launch workflow and exit" could be used at the taIl end of a workflow so that a multidev could be created for a PR, without wasting unnecessary CI time (money).

[lpeabody]

Hi! Thanks @pwtyler for creating. I was the originator of this request. To reiterate what @pwtyler has already posted, it would be nice to have an Actions workflow simply build an artifact, push that up in a branch with name pr-123, have Pantheon initiate the creation of the multidev environment for it and then have the command return whether or not the Pantheon workflow/task was successfully started and exit 0, or exit non-zero if it did not successfully start. Maybe also output the workflow ID created so I can easily plug that in locally to monitor the progress. The result is the Pantheon workflow is started and I save probably 8-10 Actions minutes which adds up fast when you have dozens of PRs a day.

I seem to remember this is how multidev:create worked a couple years back (as far as not waiting around to finish), but I went through the code for multidev:create in the 1.x and 2.x branches and it looks like it has always waited around for the Pantheon workflow to finish before the command exited. So, I'm not sure why I remember this the way I do.

Regardless, I think this would be a useful option for optimizing CI minutes utilization, which is the primary driver of this request.