[CozySocksAlways]

Desc

This PR is a fix for a couple of issues

1. There was a hidden issue with the windows runner always trying to grab dataset from gin instead of using the cache. This happened because the env variable ELEPHANT_DATA_LOCATION was incorrectly set on windows. Cache action uses crossOSenable flag which tries to restore cache on both windows and unix machines. However this caused a mismatch on where cache was restored to on windows vs unix systems as it relied on $HOME or ~ expansions.
2. Current docs CI job doesn't have a restore cache action, so it always tries to pull from gin.
3. [403 Forbidden] error from GIN when requesting from github CI. Potential rate limits from gin on github IPs
4. Unnecessary env variable clear on tests when unsetting ELEPHANT_DATA_LOCATION
5. cache_elephant_data.yml workflow creates a stray datasets- cache, when git ls-remote command to GIN fails on 403

Fixes

1. Set a relative location for the elephant-data w.r.t. to checked out elephant repo
2. Added the cache restore action to doc build job
3. a. Serve a mock dataset on localhost on the CI runner, eliminating connection to GIN
   b. Added new tests to test network connection with GIN, these are opt in and are run only on canary workflow.
4. Remove clear=True flag
5. a. Add retry attempts to git ls-remote in cache_elephant_data.yml and hard fail in case fetch fails
   b. In restore action remote git ls-remote and instead just use latest available cache on runner

More Info

• Tried relative path for the cache creation i.e. ../elephant-data, this relied on the default GITHUB_WORKSPACE but this was rejected by post action of cache action as

Post job cleanup.
[warning]Invalid pattern '../elephant-data'. Relative pathing '.' and '..' is not allowed

• clear=True used in patch.dict(os.enviro...) causes failure of the DNS resolver in windows when such a test is run first (as dumping env also dumps the dll's needed on windows for DNS resolution), this issue is not seen yet as some other test which doesn't dump the env is run first, and so the env values are available in the process memory.

• Remove the temp branch from NeuralEnsemble/elephant

• Remove temp cache created for this PR once about to merge

• Discuss on additional test for gin connectivity

[coveralls]

coverage: 14.288% (-74.3%) from 88.605% — INM-6:fix/gindata into NeuralEnsemble:master

[CozySocksAlways]

This PR has been split into #721 and #722 to keep the changes separate and make it easier to review