RFR: 8282944: GHA: Add Alpine Linux x86_64 pre-integration check [v7]

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 09:59:07 GMT, George Adams <gdams at openjdk.org> wrote:

>> Adds Alpine build CI job to the GitHub actions matrix. Currently this only builds hotspot. I can add tests too if people think that would be useful but for now I've left it as just build.
>
> George Adams has updated the pull request incrementally with one additional commit since the last revision:
> 
>   skip gtest and jtreg

The GHA code itself looks basically good. I was thinking a bit about the name, I wonder if "linux-alpine-x64" would not be better, to keep the os name in front (after all, Alpine is just a flavor of Linux, not a completely new OS). But maybe that's just me..?

The big question, as always with GHA, is if there is enough interest from the community to warrant adding this configuration to GHA. GHA testing is done on the developer's individual account's quota. It takes time and resources, and since we've introduced it we've basically only added platforms, never removing them.

Can you elaborate a bit what problems you expect to find with this addition, that is not currently detected by GHA, and why this is important enough to always run this in GHA? Basically, convince me that it is worth all the computing power and everyone's time to add this (what to me looks like a) special case.

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PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/20577#issuecomment-2289037113