feat: add 'ci_skip' test tag to bitcoin-tests.yml to handle both docker rate limit and rpc test double run

[federico-stacks]

Description

I noticed that we are intermittently hitting Docker Hub rate limits when pulling images during CI runs
(see https://github.com/stacks-network/stacks-core/actions/runs/23514194002/job/68450961455?pr=6999)

According to GitHub’s official documentation and prior discussion #6927 (comment) these limits should not apply when

• Using GitHub-hosted runners, and
• Pulling public images.

Suspected root cause
The issue appears to stem from how Docker images are pulled in certain jobs.

In the failing cases, images are pulled indirectly via the testcontainers crate (i.e., from within Rust code), rather than being explicitly pulled by the GitHub Actions runner itself. This differs from workflows like bitcoin-rpc-tests.yml, where images are pre-pulled in a dedicated step:

stacks-core/.github/workflows/bitcoin-rpc-tests.yml

Lines 63 to 64 in 7a9774e

	- name: Pre-pull bitcoind image ${{ matrix.bitcoin_version }}
	run: docker pull bitcoin/bitcoin:${{ matrix.bitcoin_version }}

Because of this, the pulls performed by testcontainers may not benefit from the special configuration or exemptions applied to GitHub-hosted runners (at least this is my hope 😄 )

Changes in this PR
To explore and mitigate this issue, this PR introduces the following:

• A new ci_skip test tag, allowing selective exclusion from default CI runs
• Application of this tag to Bitcoin RPC tests, so they are executed only within the dedicated bitcoin-rpc-tests.yml workflow (which includes explicit image pre-pulling). This also avoid double runs of these tests both as dedicated workflow and as integration tests (an already known fact we wanted to address).
• A utility script to help generate regex patterns for filtering tests by tags (so that can be reused in other workflow).

NOTE: If this hypothesis is confirmed, we may think to update testenv actions to explicitly pre-pull Docker images before running tests, so that it apply automatically to both integration and unit tests.

Applicable issues

• fixes #

Additional info (benefits, drawbacks, caveats)

Checklist

• Test coverage for new or modified code paths
• For new Clarity features or consensus changes, add property tests (see docs/property-testing.md)
• Changelog is updated
• Required documentation changes (e.g., rpc/openapi.yaml for RPC endpoints, event-dispatcher.md for new events)
• New clarity functions have corresponding PR in clarity-benchmarking repo

[coveralls]

Pull Request Test Coverage Report for Build 23865270369

Details

• 0 of 0 changed or added relevant lines in 0 files are covered.
• 1368 unchanged lines in 52 files lost coverage.
• Overall coverage decreased (-0.03%) to 85.681%

---

Files with Coverage Reduction	New Missed Lines	%
stackslib/src/burnchains/burnchain.rs	1	72.17%
stackslib/src/chainstate/stacks/miner.rs	1	83.37%
stackslib/src/clarity_vm/clarity.rs	1	93.7%
stackslib/src/net/download/nakamoto/download_state_machine.rs	1	90.57%
stackslib/src/net/mod.rs	1	77.92%
stackslib/src/net/stackerdb/mod.rs	1	87.13%
stacks-node/src/burnchains/rpc/bitcoin_rpc_client/mod.rs	1	97.66%
stacks-signer/src/client/stacks_client.rs	1	86.19%
clarity/src/vm/functions/define.rs	2	99.34%
stacks-common/src/deps_common/bitcoin/util/hash.rs	2	81.45%

Totals
Change from base Build 23400582460:	-0.03%
Covered Lines:	186565
Relevant Lines:	217744

---

💛 - Coveralls

[simone-stacks]

lgtm!

[github-actions]

This pull request has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. Please open a new issue for related bugs.