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How to reduce CI costs with Graphite

How to reduce CI costs with Graphite

Sara Verdi
Sara Verdi
Graphite software engineer
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When teams adopt the stacking workflow, each new pull request (PR) can trigger its own set of CI tests. This not only increases the overall number of CI runs but also adds overhead from behind‐the-scenes rebasing and dependency checks. For teams that are scaling up their development, this can result in:

  • Excessive CI runs
  • Longer feedback loops
  • Resource bottlenecks

Graphite addresses these issues by optimizing the order and grouping of PR merges with its powerful merge queue tool, which is designed to speed up the merging process while also reducing CI costs. The merge queue is stack-aware, meaning it understands the relationship between stacked PRs and can optimize their processing accordingly. There are three primary merge queue optimizations:

  • Fast-forward merge: Runs CI on all PRs in a stack in parallel, eliminating sequential wait times and reducing redundant tests.
  • Parallel CI on multiple stacks: Executes CI concurrently on several stacks by grouping PRs into temporary drafts, significantly speeding up merge times while ensuring atomicity.
  • Batching: Processes multiple stacks as a single batch to minimize CI runs and efficiently isolate failures, lowering overall CI overhead.

Ready to level-up your CI pipeline? Get started with Graphite:

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