Run compatibility tests on arm64 with actuated

[dmathieu]

Following open-telemetry/community#1954, this is using the actuated self-hosted runners provided by the CNCF to run the compatibility tests on the ARM architecture.

This doesn't update the compatibility matrix yet, the intent is to have the new tests running for a couple weeks to ensure their stability before we commit to a public change.

[MrAlias]

Can you add a "playbook" for troubleshooting this? It would be ideal if have documentation about how this is run and how to handle failures.

[dmathieu]

The usage is very basic (the runs-on attribute is all there is, actuated then handles the machine, there is no direct access to it), and is describe in https://actuated.dev/blog/arm-ci-cncf-ampere.
There's also a slack workspace that we can get invited into.

So I wonder if it's worth having specific documentation in this repository. Maybe that should rather be in the community repository (I'm happy to open it there).

cc @atoulme

[atoulme]

Probably a great idea to have a small doc on the community repository and link it from your build instructions. We have been learning a fair amount since the start of the engagement. Other teams also are on different adoption curves on this so they'd all benefit.

[XSAM]

Could we have a doc (maybe on https://github.com/open-telemetry/community) to present a best practice for using actuated service on github action? By making it a standard for supporting ARM, all teams can use the same snippet code and have a uniform playbook to handle exceptions.

[pellared]

Use tagged version otherwise the CI may become unstable after a new major release of a GitHub Action.

[dmathieu]

I have started adding documentation on the community repository: open-telemetry/community#1983

[alexellis]

I have updated the compatibility matrix. Actuated doesn't seem to communicate on which linux distribution they use in their runners, so I'm happy to change it to Linux rather than Ubuntu if that seems better.

We use Ubuntu 22.04 at present. You can simply create a job at any time and run cat /etc/os-release if you are ever curious 🙂

[pellared]

@dmathieu I think it is worth adding a mention in the changelog. WDYT?

EDIT: E.g. something like "Add ARM64 platform to the compatibility testing suite". I am waiting for your feedback before clicking the "merge" button.

[dmathieu]

I have added a changelog entry. However, I also think we should wait for open-telemetry/community#1983 to be merged, so we can link to that doc.

[dmathieu]

With the community PR being merged, this PR is ready to go!
I have added a link to the community doc as well.

[alexellis]

Thanks @dmathieu !