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

[George Adams]

On Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:53:02 GMT, Magnus Ihse Bursie <ihse at openjdk.org> wrote:

> 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.

Including Alpine Linux in the GHA pipeline is valuable because it uses the musl C library, which is different from the glibc found in most other Linux distributions. This difference can expose compatibility issues that might not be caught elsewhere. Given Alpine's popularity in containerised environments due to its small footprint and security features, ensuring that OpenJDK works well on Alpine helps meet the needs of developers who rely on these setups. By testing on Alpine, we can catch potential issues early and make OpenJDK more reliable in a variety of environments, especially in cloud-native applications where Alpine is often used.

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PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/20577#issuecomment-2291035727