Appveyor: how to run 2 jobs on Windows image and only one on Linux image?

Question

I want to test my python project on both Windows and Ubuntu. Fortunately Appveyor supports both systems since several months.

On Windows I used to run a test for 32 bits and 64 bits python configuring the environment matrix with

    - PYTHON: "C:\\Python36"
    - PYTHON: "C:\\Python36-x64"

Now if I want to run jobs for Ubuntu, as this PYTHON variable doubles the jobs number, I get the Ubuntu job running two times instead of only once (moreover, never using this PYTHON variable, what's useless on Ubuntu). Excerpt of appveyor.yml to fix:

version: build{build}

branches:
  only:
  - master
  - pre-release
  - dev

image:
  - Visual Studio 2015
  - Ubuntu1804

max_jobs: 1

environment:
  matrix:
    # For Python versions available on Appveyor, see
    # https://www.appveyor.com/docs/windows-images-software/#python
    # https://www.appveyor.com/docs/linux-images-software#python
    - PYTHON: "C:\\Python36"
    - PYTHON: "C:\\Python36-x64"

install:
  # We need wheel installed to build wheels
  - cmd: "%PYTHON%\\python.exe -m pip install wheel pytest"
  - sh: "pip install wheel pytest"

build: off

test_script:
  # Note that you must use the environment variable %PYTHON% to refer to
  # the interpreter you're using - Appveyor does not do anything special
  # to put the Python version you want to use on PATH.
  - cmd: "%PYTHON%\\python.exe setup.py test"
  - sh: "python setup.py test"

I have seen in the doc there is a variety of possibilities to exclude some parts from being run using keywords like for: or exclude but can't figure out how to use them correctly.

So, is there a way to still run the two Windows jobs and only one Ubuntu job?

(as a workaround I could remove the 32 bit python test maybe but this is a not really satisfying trick).

Answer 1

Sure it is doable, please check this part of docs. In your case you can get rid of image section and set up matrix like this:

environment:
  matrix:
    - APPVEYOR_BUILD_WORKER_IMAGE: Visual Studio 2015
      PYTHON: "C:\\Python36"
    - APPVEYOR_BUILD_WORKER_IMAGE: Visual Studio 2015
      PYTHON: "C:\\Python36-x64"
    - APPVEYOR_BUILD_WORKER_IMAGE: Ubuntu1804