Feature request: Adding a `timelimit` option

[zaikunzhang]

Hello,

Thank you again for these life-changing facilities of providing MATLAB on GitHub Actions.

Being probably one of the heaviest users of the facilities, may I request the following feature? It would be great if you could consider it.

• The request. May I request adding a timelimit option to run-command? If the commands being executed do not stop before the value of timelimit, then terminate the current step and mark it as a success.

• An example.

name: A time-consuming step
uses: matlab-actions/run-commans@v2
with:
   timelimit: 5h  # The maximum time allowed. If the commands below do not finish before this value, then terminate the step and mark it as a success.
   command:
       command1;
       command2;
       ...       

• The motivation. As an example, imagine that you would like to stress test a piece of MATLAB software on large problems. For such a stress test, you regard it as a success as long as the code does not run into errors within a few hours. However, as a stress test, it will unlikely finish within six hours, the hard limit for the running time of GitHub-hosted runners; if it runs over six hours, GitHub will mark it as a failure, which is not desirable. That is why we may like to terminate the job within the prescribed timelimit value and mark the step as a success.

• The implementation. Below is an example by me, but it works only with bash commands. Since we cannot run MATLAB in bash after matlab-actions/setup-matlab, an update on the run-command side would be great!

  https://github.com/equipez/run-bash-command/blob/main/run.sh

Thank you for your consideration.

Best wishes,
Zaikun
PhD and Professor in Applied Mathematics
Sun Yat-sent University

[mcafaro]

Hi @zaikunzhang,

What about using the timer function?

      - name: Run MATLAB command
        uses: matlab-actions/run-command@v2
        with:
          command: |
            % Set up quit timer 
            timeout = 60; % seconds
            t = timer(TimerFcn=@(~,~)quit(), StartDelay=timeout);
            start(t);

            % Long running code...
            while true
                pause(1);
            end

[zaikunzhang]

What about using the timer function?

Thank you @mcafaro , for pointing me to the timer function. I didn't know it. It will be very helpful in my work.

However, it does not always work as expected, especially in a project like PRIMA, which involves MEX functions.

According to my experiment, if the "Long running code" is spending the time within a MEX function, then timer will not be able to stop it. I suppose this is reflected in the following documentation of timer:

Limitations:
...If MATLAB is busy processing another task, the timer callback might not execute.

If you would like to test, you may use the following code.

Thank you.

% testtime.m
function testtime()

    % Set up quit timer
    timeout = 2; % seconds
    t = timer(TimerFcn=@(~,~)quit(), StartDelay=timeout);
    start(t);

    tic
    timestwo(1);
    toc

    disp('Test completed'); 

! timestwo.F
! This is a slight modification of the official timestwo.F, adding a time-consuming loop. 
#include "fintrf.h"
C======================================================================
#if 0
C
C     timestwo.F
C     .F file needs to be preprocessed to generate .for equivalent
C
#endif
C
C     timestwo.f
C
C     Computational function that takes a scalar and doubles it.

C     This is a MEX-file for MATLAB.
C     Copyright 1984-2018 The MathWorks, Inc.
C
C======================================================================
C     Gateway routine
      subroutine mexFunction(nlhs, plhs, nrhs, prhs)

C     Declarations
      implicit none

C     mexFunction arguments:
      mwPointer plhs(*), prhs(*)
      integer nlhs, nrhs

C     Function declarations:

#if MX_HAS_INTERLEAVED_COMPLEX
      mwPointer mxGetDoubles
#else
      mwPointer mxGetPr
#endif

      mwPointer mxCreateDoubleMatrix
      integer mxIsNumeric
      mwPointer mxGetM, mxGetN

C     Pointers to input/output mxArrays:
      mwPointer x_ptr, y_ptr

C     Array information:
      mwPointer mrows, ncols
      mwSize size

C     Arguments for computational routine:
      real*8  x_input, y_output
      integer*8 i

C-----------------------------------------------------------------------
C     Check for proper number of arguments.
      if(nrhs .ne. 1) then
         call mexErrMsgIdAndTxt ('MATLAB:timestwo:nInput',
     +                           'One input required.')
      elseif(nlhs .gt. 1) then
         call mexErrMsgIdAndTxt ('MATLAB:timestwo:nOutput',
     +                           'Too many output arguments.')
      endif

C     Validate inputs
C     Check that the input is a number.
      if(mxIsNumeric(prhs(1)) .eq. 0) then
         call mexErrMsgIdAndTxt ('MATLAB:timestwo:NonNumeric',
     +                           'Input must be a number.')
      endif

C     Get the size of the input array.
      mrows = mxGetM(prhs(1))
      ncols = mxGetN(prhs(1))
      size = mrows*ncols

C     Create Fortran array from the input argument.

#if MX_HAS_INTERLEAVED_COMPLEX
      x_ptr = mxGetDoubles(prhs(1))
#else
      x_ptr = mxGetPr(prhs(1))
#endif
      call mxCopyPtrToReal8(x_ptr,x_input,size)

C     Create matrix for the return argument.
      plhs(1) = mxCreateDoubleMatrix(mrows,ncols,0)
#if MX_HAS_INTERLEAVED_COMPLEX
      y_ptr = mxGetDoubles(plhs(1))
#else
      y_ptr = mxGetPr(plhs(1))
#endif

C     Call the computational subroutine.
      call timestwo(y_output, x_input)

C     Load the data into y_ptr, which is the output to MATLAB.
      call mxCopyReal8ToPtr(y_output,y_ptr,size)

      i = -huge(i)
      do while (i <= huge(i))
         i = i + 1
         write(*,*) 'This is a long loop. Current i = ', i
      end do

      return
      end

C-----------------------------------------------------------------------
C     Computational routine

      subroutine timestwo(y_output, x_input)
      real*8 x_input, y_output

      y_output = 2.0 * x_input
      return
      end

[zaikunzhang]

Here is my home-made solution:

https://github.com/equipez/run-matlab-command .

It depends on the undocumented run-matlab-command utility.

A use case:

https://github.com/libprima/prima/blob/5821f11abb07dbfd635551d1ebafcc693cd1d84f/.github/workflows/stress_test_matlab.yml#L189-L207

An official solution would be much nicer.

Thank you for your consideration.