performance_smoke burned nearly all of its 15-minute budget before the
benchmark even started, twice in a row: validate.yml had no browser cache
at all, so every browser job paid for a full `playwright install
--with-deps` — apt work the ubuntu-latest image makes redundant, with
unbounded retries against an unreachable azure mirror on top. For a
measuring job that is worse than lost minutes: the timing window competes
with package installation on the same runner.
#175 fixed this for the review pipeline but deliberately left the flag
here, reasoning that a prerelease gate values predictability over
minutes. That reasoning was wrong — the flag is what made the gate
unpredictable.
Browsers are now cached per package-lock hash in smoke, golden,
performance_smoke and the full performance run; installation happens only
on a cache miss and no longer touches apt. performance_smoke keeps
headroom for a cold cache at 20 minutes. If the image ever drops a
required library, Chromium fails to launch with a clear missing-libraries
error; that is the moment to bring the flag back.
Issue: #206
User-Visible: no
Matysh