Generalize reusable Windows CI jobs by webknjaz · Pull Request #121766 · python/cpython

Sometimes, GitHub Actions turn things into strings when passing the
data around. So it's usually safer to turn them into proper booleans
in expressions explicitly.

Previously, it didn't have a human-readable explanation which is a
bad tone as it's less obvious how it's supposed to be used.

Previously, it was duplicated in each job which is not DRY.

Previously, those flags would sometimes end up having empty string
values which tends to break evaluating them as JSON. This patch adds
`false` fallbacks to all such outputs.

This allows feeding them to `fromJSON()` without a fear of them
causing surprising internal behaviors in the GitHub Actions CI/CD
workflows platform itself [[1]]. The behavior observed was that
some skipped jobs wouldn't show up in the workflow sidebar view at
all, would display in the graph view as `Waiting for pending jobs`
and in the `${{ needs }}` context, they would have a
`result: failure` entry.

This should help make PRs like python#121831 mergeable again.

[1]: python#121766 (comment)

Previously, those flags would sometimes end up having empty string
values which tends to break evaluating them as JSON. This patch adds
`false` fallbacks to all such outputs.

This allows feeding them to `fromJSON()` without a fear of them
causing surprising internal behaviors in the GitHub Actions CI/CD
workflows platform itself [[1]]. The behavior observed was that
some skipped jobs wouldn't show up in the workflow sidebar view at
all, would display in the graph view as `Waiting for pending jobs`
and in the `${{ needs }}` context, they would have a
`result: failure` entry [[2]].

This should help make PRs like python#121831 mergeable again.

[1]: python#121766 (comment)
[2]: https://github.com/python/cpython/actions/runs/9950331379/job/27501637459?pr=121831#step:2:244

Previously, those flags would sometimes end up having empty string
values, which tends to break evaluating them as JSON. This patch adds
`false` fallbacks to all such outputs.

This allows feeding them to `fromJSON()` without a fear of them
causing surprising internal behaviors in the GitHub Actions CI/CD
workflows platform itself [[1]]. The behavior observed was that
some skipped jobs wouldn't show up in the workflow sidebar view at
all, would display in the graph view as `Waiting for pending jobs`
and in the `${{ needs }}` context, they would have a
`result: failure` entry [[2]].

This should help make PRs like python#121831 mergeable again.

[1]: python#121766 (comment)
[2]: https://github.com/python/cpython/actions/runs/9950331379/job/27501637459?pr=121831#step:2:244

Previously, those flags would sometimes end up having empty string
values, which tends to break evaluating them as JSON. This patch adds
`false` fallbacks to all such outputs.

This allows feeding them to `fromJSON()` without a fear of them
causing surprising internal behaviors in the GitHub Actions CI/CD
workflows platform itself [[1]]. The behavior observed was that
some skipped jobs wouldn't show up in the workflow sidebar view at
all, would display in the graph view as `Waiting for pending jobs`
and in the `${{ needs }}` context, they would have a
`result: failure` entry [[2]].

This should help make PRs like python#121831 mergeable again.

[1]: python#121766 (comment)
[2]: https://github.com/python/cpython/actions/runs/9950331379/job/27501637459?pr=121831#step:2:244

Previously, those flags would sometimes end up having empty string
values, which tends to break evaluating them as JSON. This patch adds
`false` fallbacks to all such outputs.

This allows feeding them to `fromJSON()` without a fear of them
causing surprising internal behaviors in the GitHub Actions CI/CD
workflows platform itself [[1]]. The behavior observed was that
some skipped jobs wouldn't show up in the workflow sidebar view at
all, would display in the graph view as `Waiting for pending jobs`
and in the `${{ needs }}` context, they would have a
`result: failure` entry [[2]].

This should help make PRs like python#121831 mergeable again.

[1]: python#121766 (comment)
[2]: https://github.com/python/cpython/actions/runs/9950331379/job/27501637459?pr=121831#step:2:244

(cherry picked from commit 7982363)