ci: How about just dropping native smol support?

[Xuanwo]

Smol tests are usually slow, prone to timeouts, and aren't actively used by our users. I propose dropping them for now. If we want this later, we can build an iceberg-runtime-smol in the future.

[manuzhang]

Do you have an example of slow and error-prone smol tests?

[Xuanwo]

For example:

---- test_drop_table stdout ----
Error: Unexpected => Failure in doing io operation

Source: ConfigInvalid (persistent) at write, context: { uri: http://172.18.0.3:9000/warehouse/hive/test_drop_table.db/my_table/metadata/00000-8cf189d3-9339-45ac-97e0-64ff77820c9d.metadata.json, response: Parts { status: 404, version: HTTP/1.1, headers: {"accept-ranges": "bytes", "content-length": "526", "content-type": "application/xml", "server": "MinIO", "strict-transport-security": "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains", "vary": "Origin", "vary": "Accept-Encoding", "x-amz-id-2": "dd9025bab4ad464b049177c95eb6ebf374d3b3fd1af9251148b658df7ac2e3e8", "x-amz-request-id": "1877876FF620D54B", "x-content-type-options": "nosniff", "x-ratelimit-limit": "4412", "x-ratelimit-remaining": "4412", "x-xss-protection": "1; mode=block", "date": "Thu, 13 Nov 2025 09:38:14 GMT"} }, service: s3, path: hive/test_drop_table.db/my_table/metadata/00000-8cf189d3-9339-45ac-97e0-64ff77820c9d.metadata.json, written: 561 } => S3Error { code: "NoSuchBucket", message: "The specified bucket does not exist", resource: "/warehouse/hive/test_drop_table.db/my_table/metadata/00000-8cf189d3-9339-45ac-97e0-64ff77820c9d.metadata.json", request_id: "1877876FF620D54B" }



failures:
    test_create_table
    test_drop_table

test result: FAILED. 12 passed; 2 failed; 0 ignored; 0 measured; 0 filtered out; finished in 1.45s

2025-11-13T09:38:15.269687Z  INFO iceberg_test_utils::cmd: Starting to Stopping docker compose in /home/runner/work/iceberg-rust/iceberg-rust/crates/catalog/glue/testdata/glue_catalog, project name: glue_catalog_test, command: cd "/home/runner/work/iceberg-rust/iceberg-rust/crates/catalog/glue/testdata/glue_catalog" && "docker" "compose" "-p" "glue_catalog_test" "down" "-v" "--remove-orphans"
 Container glue_catalog_test-moto-1  Stopping
 Container glue_catalog_test-mc-1  Stopping
 Container glue_catalog_test-moto-1  Stopped
 Container glue_catalog_test-moto-1  Removing
 Container glue_catalog_test-moto-1  Removed
 Container glue_catalog_test-mc-1  Stopped
 Container glue_catalog_test-mc-1  Removing
 Container glue_catalog_test-mc-1  Removed
 Container glue_catalog_test-minio-1  Stopping
 Container glue_catalog_test-minio-1  Stopped
 Container glue_catalog_test-minio-1  Removing
 Container glue_catalog_test-minio-1  Removed
 Network glue_catalog_test_default  Removing
 Network glue_catalog_test_default  Removed
2025-11-13T09:38:25.591560Z  INFO iceberg_test_utils::cmd: Stopping docker compose in /home/runner/work/iceberg-rust/iceberg-rust/crates/catalog/glue/testdata/glue_catalog, project name: glue_catalog_test succeed!
error: test failed, to rerun pass `-p iceberg-catalog-glue --test glue_catalog_test`
     Running unittests src/lib.rs (target/debug/deps/iceberg_catalog_hms-27d842a0b4415c13)

https://github.com/apache/iceberg-rust/actions/runs/19326993638/job/55280459432

[manuzhang]

Is this related to #1838? cc @kevinjqliu

[liurenjie1024]

I'm fine with dropping smol support, but I want to ensure that we are currently async runtime independent, e.g. we don't rely on some specific engine like tokio except datafusion integration. Is there other way to ensure this?

[Xuanwo]

I'm fine with dropping smol support, but I want to ensure that we are currently async runtime independent, e.g. we don't rely on some specific engine like tokio except datafusion integration. Is there other way to ensure this?

I think it will be easier once we switch to iceberg-kernel, since we only depend on the trait.