Travis: switch to xenial build environment and add clang and C++11 jobs

[meyerj]

Example build: https://travis-ci.org/orocos-toolchain/rtt/builds/189295270

Travis supports containerized builds since 2 years, which improve build times. With the apt add-on it is also possible to install system dependencies without the need for sudo. (see #195 (comment)).

I also added a build matrix to test clang and gcc builds with and without c++11 enabled. We might also include Mac OS X here.

We are already running integration tests for the toolchain for the orocos_toolchain repository, but without unit tests: orocos-toolchain/orocos_toolchain#15 (only log4cpp, rtt and ocl)

[ahoarau]

Different gcc and clang version could also be useful (especially gcc5+ and clang 3.8+)

[snrkiwi]

litmus

[snrkiwi]

LGTM .... grrr, auto-correct!

[meyerj]

Different gcc and clang version could also be useful (especially gcc5+ and clang 3.8+)

Done. Both gcc 5.4 builds currently fail consistently because of a check error in dev_test.

The method_test occasionally stalls for some jobs and Travis aborts after 10 minutes. Could be related to the containerized build environment.

[ahoarau]

Excellent ! That could be useful for the xenial (gcc5 default ) / kinetic release (?)

[meyerj]

Unfortunately the containerized build infrastructure has been deprecated again in the meantime. We can still apply most of the changes in this PR and switch to xenial (#279), which is now supported by the fully virtualized infrastructure.

[meyerj]

We could try to enable ccache for Travis builds to eventually reduce the build times. If I understood correctly there is one cache per branch and pull request builds use the cache of the default branch.

Unfortunately some unit tests are still unreliable on Travis in a virtualized environment because they depend on more or less accurate timing or check timeouts. Those test cases could be disabled for CI by checking the CI environment variable, or the expectations must be relaxed.

Previous related issues:

• Fix mqueue transport and corba ipc tests #147
• Slave test failing undeterministically #164
• Another attempt to fix flaky unit tests at Travis #266

The build matrix with 6 or more jobs makes it more likely that this will happen.

[ahoarau]

What about using https://github.com/ros-industrial/industrial_ci ?

[meyerj]

What about using https://github.com/ros-industrial/industrial_ci ?

What would be the added value of industrial_ci? As far as I know it compiles the package and runs the unit test in a docker container that has a proper ROS environment. Being able to test on newer platforms, like Ubuntu Bionic, with newer Boost versions would definitely be a plus. On the other hand RTT is not a ROS package (e.g. make run_tests would not work) and would not need many of the ROS tools. I also do not see how running in docker helps with fixing flaky unit tests that depend on timing.

Is there another advantage of industrial_ci that I am not aware of?

I suggest to leave that for a later PR. One of the things we wanted to try here is adding macOS to the build matrix, which would not be possible with docker, I guess.

[ahoarau]

What would be the added value of industrial_ci?

Just very simple to setup in all the "standard" environnements (aka distribs), from my ROS user point of view of course.
I have no idea how many people are using rtt in a non-ros env.
True that having a minimal build is nice, as long as it covers many compilers version/boost version combinations, usually provided by main distribs.

[meyerj]

Turns out the the corba-ipc-test fails on macOS because the corba-ipc-server process running in the background "forgets" about the registered types. As a result the connection attempts made by the corba-ipc-test fail with

0.053 [ Debug  ][Logger] Scanning file /Users/travis/build/orocos-toolchain/rtt/build/install/lib/orocos/macosx/./types/librtt-typekit-macosx.dylib ...Found library librtt-typekit-macosx.dylib
0.022 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Loading Typekit rtt-types.
0.022 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'int' to the Orocos Type System.
0.022 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered new 'CORBA' transport for int
0.022 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'uint' to the Orocos Type System.
0.022 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered new 'CORBA' transport for uint
0.023 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'llong' to the Orocos Type System.
0.023 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered new 'CORBA' transport for llong
0.023 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'ullong' to the Orocos Type System.
0.023 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered new 'CORBA' transport for ullong
0.023 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'double' to the Orocos Type System.
0.023 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered new 'CORBA' transport for double
0.023 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'float' to the Orocos Type System.
0.023 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered new 'CORBA' transport for float
0.023 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'char' to the Orocos Type System.
0.024 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered new 'CORBA' transport for char
0.024 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'bool' to the Orocos Type System.
0.024 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered new 'CORBA' transport for bool
0.024 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'void' to the Orocos Type System.
0.024 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered new 'CORBA' transport for void
0.024 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'FlowStatus' to the Orocos Type System.
0.024 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'SendStatus' to the Orocos Type System.
0.024 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'PropertyBag' to the Orocos Type System.
0.024 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'ConnPolicy' to the Orocos Type System.
0.025 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered new 'CORBA' transport for ConnPolicy
0.025 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'SendHandle' to the Orocos Type System.
0.025 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'TaskContext' to the Orocos Type System.
0.025 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered new 'CORBA' transport for TaskContext
0.025 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'string' to the Orocos Type System.
0.025 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered new 'CORBA' transport for string
0.026 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'array' to the Orocos Type System.
0.026 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered new 'CORBA' transport for array
0.026 [ Debug  ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered Type 'rt_string' to the Orocos Type System.
0.026 [ Info   ][TypekitRepository::Import] Registered new 'CORBA' transport for rt_string
0.058 [ Info   ][Logger] Loaded RTT TypeKit/Transport 'rtt-types' from 'rtt-typekit'
[...]
40.352 [ Warning][./corba-ipc-server::main()] The protocol with id 1 did not register a fall-back handler for unknown types!
40.352 [ Warning][./corba-ipc-server::main()]   triggered by: unknown_t which does not have a transport.
40.352 [ Debug  ][./corba-ipc-server::main()] Types known to the Orocos Type System.
40.352 [ Debug  ][./corba-ipc-server::main()] Transports known to the Orocos Type System.

(https://travis-ci.org/orocos-toolchain/rtt/jobs/529291825)

and ultimately both processes segfault.

I could reproduce this locally with a macOS 10.13 system. Surprisingly, if corba-ipc-server is started explicitly at the command line, all unit tests pass and the issue is gone. Only if it is launched via setup_corba or indirectly by make check the error is reproducible.