[dev innerloop] build runtime tests without CoreCLR

[lambdageek]

Make it possible to build and run the tests using Mono, without building all of CoreCLR. In principle the runtime tests infrastructure only needs corerun (and ilasm - but I think that can already be built from a separate subset)

• Build tests against each RuntimeFlavor's System.Private.CoreLib (PR: Don't build ReferenceSystemPrivateCoreLib tests with Mono #58232)
• Build corerun without building coreclr: PR [build] Create clr.host subset to remove patching step for mono runtime tests #62500
• build the Tests/Core_Root directory layout directly from artifacts/bin/mono, without a separate mono patching step PR: PR [build] Create clr.host subset to remove patching step for mono runtime tests #62500
• [docs] Update mono workflow doc to use clr.hosts subset for working with runtime tests #62581
• Update mono runtime tests CI to generate Core_Root without building CoreCLR Make mono runtime tests stop using patching #43952
• For mobile and WASM don't depend on corerun at all (free consequence of the removing the patching of Core_Root)
• Move corerun to src/native/hosts/ #62512
  • see discussion in Make mono runtime tests stop using patching #43952 for details
• Remove the PatchCoreClrCoreRoot/RestoreCoreClrCoreRoot targets from mono.proj as part of the monthly infrastructure rollout.
• move all mono runs to use global-build-job.yml

[ghost]

Tagging subscribers to this area: @hoyosjs
See info in area-owners.md if you want to be subscribed.

Issue Details

---

Make it possible to build and run the tests using Mono, without building all of CoreCLR. In principle the runtime tests infrastructure only needs corerun

• Build tests against each RuntimeFlavor's System.Private.CoreLib (PR: Don't build ReferenceSystemPrivateCoreLib tests with Mono #58232)
• Build corerun without building coreclr
  • Maybe move it to src/native/hosts/
• build the Tests/Core_Root directory layout directly from artifacts/bin/mono, without a separate mono patching step

Stretch goal:

• For mobile and WASM don't depend on corerun at all

Author:	lambdageek
Assignees:	-
Labels:	area-Infrastructure-coreclr, untriaged
Milestone:	-

[ghost]

Tagging subscribers to this area: @dotnet/runtime-infrastructure
See info in area-owners.md if you want to be subscribed.

Issue Details

---

Make it possible to build and run the tests using Mono, without building all of CoreCLR. In principle the runtime tests infrastructure only needs corerun

• Build tests against each RuntimeFlavor's System.Private.CoreLib (PR: Don't build ReferenceSystemPrivateCoreLib tests with Mono #58232)
• Build corerun without building coreclr
  • Maybe move it to src/native/hosts/
• build the Tests/Core_Root directory layout directly from artifacts/bin/mono, without a separate mono patching step

Stretch goal:

• For mobile and WASM don't depend on corerun at all

Author:	lambdageek
Assignees:	-
Labels:	enhancement, area-Infrastructure, untriaged, tracking, Bottom Up Work
Milestone:	-

[lambdageek]

This could also benefit the CI pipelines although actually cleaning up the CI dependencies could be done separately after the initial work of just teasing apart the build dependencies is completed.

[am11]

@lambdageek, a side question (in case you know it offhand 🙂), do we have any direct dev innerloop script for mono that {re}builds 'just' the native components and entirely skips .NET SDK / MSBuild? e.g. in case of non-mono subsets, we can use:

OSName=banana
OSArch=apricotarch
ROOTFS_DIR=/crossrootfs/$OSArch
export ROOTFS_DIR

# coreclr
/runtime/src/coreclr/build-runtime.sh -skipgenerateversion -skipmanaged -nopgooptimize \
    -os $OSName -cross -$OSArch

# libraries/native
/runtime/src/libraries/Native/build-native.sh -skipgenerateversion -skipmanaged -os $OSName \
    -cross -$OSArch

# corehost (dotnet(1) etc.) is currently a bit mouthful
/runtime/src/native/corehost/build.sh -skipmanaged -skipgenerateversion -os $OSName -cross -$OSArch \
    -policyver 0.0.1-dev -fxrver 0.0.1-dev -hostver 0.0.1-dev -apphostver 0.0.1-dev \
    -commithash $(git -C /runtime rev-parse HEAD)

(these are also useful to build stage 0 on new platforms natively, where .NET SDK is not yet available and crossbuild is not yet configured)

[lambdageek]

@lambdageek, a side question (in case you know it offhand 🙂), do we have any direct dev innerloop script for mono that {re}builds 'just' the native components and entirely skips .NET SDK / MSBuild?

I think @vargaz just runs cmake directly. I don't think we have any scripts to simplify it.

[marek-safar]

@trylek is this something you are looking into?

[trylek]

Not directly right now - the test refactoring we're working on with Jeremy might simplify overall testing infrastructure including Mono though. For this particular change, yesterday I reviewed Nathan's PR 62500 (see link above) that seems to be contributing to the efforts tracked by this issue.

[lambdageek]

For mobile and WASM don't depend on corerun at all

@naricc I think this is incidentally fixed by #62652, right? Or are there still some coreclr artifacts that are used by the mobile runtime testing CI legs?

[naricc]

@lambdageek Wasm never depended on coreclr in the first place, since it was using the global-build-job.yml. I don't think android and iOS did either, but I am looking at the runtime templates and it is hard to make out. But yes, if they did it should be fixed now.

It probably makes sense to move all mono runs to use global-build-job.

[lambdageek]

It probably makes sense to move all mono runs to use global-build-job.

I don't know any of the consequences of that, but it sounds good, and if you think it's a good idea, go for it. 😁

[safern]

It probably makes sense to move all mono runs to use global-build-job.

We have #45521 to track that work.

[SamMonoRT]

@naricc -- Assigning this to you and moving to 8.0.0 I believe the 3 remaining items are related to your open PR.