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CI: force software rendering to fix flaky VTK off-screen bus error (#1078)#1084

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CI: force software rendering to fix flaky VTK off-screen bus error (#1078)#1084
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Pull request type

  • Code changes (bugfix, features)

Checklist

  • Lint passes locally (workflow YAML only; validated with yaml.safe_load)
  • Tests — n/a, this is a CI configuration change (no library code touched)
  • CHANGELOG.md — n/a per the changelog's own "should not be here: github maintenance"

Current behavior

tests/integration/test_plots.py's PyVista off-screen animation tests
(test_flight_animation_export_gif and neighbours) intermittently crash the
whole pytest process with Fatal Python error: Bus error — a native SIGBUS
inside VTK's off-screen OpenGL on the headless Linux runner. When it fires the
interpreter dies (rather than a test failing cleanly), so coverage upload is
skipped and the whole matrix goes red. It also hits develop directly. This is #1078.

New behavior

Forces Mesa software rendering on the test jobs by setting
LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 and GALLIUM_DRIVER=llvmpipe. The
setup-headless-display-action already provides a display; the remaining
fragile spot is the GL path itself, and pinning it to llvmpipe removes this
class of intermittent off-screen bus error without skipping any test or losing
coverage. The vars are a no-op off Linux, so the macOS/Windows matrix legs are
unaffected.

Why not the alternatives (from the issue)

  • pytest-rerunfailures alone can't help — a SIGBUS kills the interpreter,
    so there's nothing left to rerun.
  • pytest-forked would isolate the crash but needs os.fork, and the
    matrix includes windows-latest.

Software rendering targets the root cause instead. If it still flakes after
this, a rerun layer for residual soft failures is the natural follow-up — but
that's belt-and-suspenders once the hard crash is gone.

Breaking change

  • No

Additional information

Being a CI flake, this can't be proven fixed from a single run — but forcing
llvmpipe is the standard, low-risk mitigation for VTK off-screen bus errors on
GitHub headless runners, and it changes nothing about the library or the tests.
Happy to switch to a separate-step or rerun approach if a maintainer prefers.

Closes #1078

@wuisabel-gif
wuisabel-gif requested a review from a team as a code owner July 22, 2026 15:29
@wuisabel-gif

wuisabel-gif commented Jul 22, 2026

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Could a maintainer approve the workflow run on this PR when you get a chance? Since it's a CI-flake fix, the CI result is really the only way to see whether forcing software rendering clears the intermittent VTK bus error so a green run here (and ideally a couple of re-runs) is the signal we're after. No library code is touched, only the two test-workflow env blocks. Thanks!

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