The first beta's release workflow failed twice in backend_tests:
TestHostAgentCredentialFileHandoff, added on 2026-10-11 and so new to
every release job, compiles pulse-agent itself and was killed at exactly
180s with "build agent from this source: signal: killed".
The release runner starts each API shard with a small pinned GOMAXPROCS,
and the test's child compiler inherits it. A cold agent build is about
250 CPU-seconds, so under the pin it serializes past the test's fixed
three-minute limit. The release job also has no Go build cache, and the
race-enabled test binary the runner compiles does not warm this plain
build. Pull request jobs keep a warm cache, which is why the test passed
there.
Reproduced on pulse-dev with the shard's conditions, a prebuilt test
binary, GOMAXPROCS=1 and an empty cache: the test fails at 180.02s with
the identical message. With the agent built once beforehand, unpinned, in
99s, the same pinned run passes in 16s.
Build the agent once in the runner, after compiling the test binary and
before any shard starts, with the full CPU count. The runner test pins
that order so the warm-up cannot drift after the shards, and the contract
records why. Against the previous runner the pin fails with the expected
message. The release preflight and policy suites pass.
Contract-Neutral: Release test runner ordering only; no published artifact, tag, signing, install or customer contract changes.
rcourtman
9c28f097b3