[Python-Dev] Visual Studio Team Services checks on pull requests

[Steve Dower]

Hi python-dev

Just drawing your attention to a change we're currently working through
on github. There are more details on my post on python-committers at
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-committers/2018-May/005404.html
but this is the short version.

Microsoft has donated a significant amount of macOS, Windows and Linux
build time on Visual Studio Team Services for CPython that we can use
for PR and commit builds on github. We've hooked these up already, so
you will see new checks on github pull requests (e.g.
https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/6937 ). These are currently not
required, but apart from some asyncio tests they appear to be totally
stable and considerably faster than our current ones.

There are a few limitations still, which I'll be working with the VSTS
team to resolve. Feel free to email me with any questions or suggestions.

And for complete openness, Microsoft hopes that this will be good
publicity for VSTS. If you have any examples of this working (e.g. you
adopt it for other projects, start using it at work, etc.) then please
pass those on to me as well. It will help convince then to keep giving
us free resources :)

Cheers,
Steve