[BUG] submodule sync script assumes cudf commits are required to see any changes

[jlowe]

The cudf submodule sync script has this logic:

if [[ "${cudf_sha}" == "${cudf_prev_sha}" ]]; then
  echo "Submodule is up to date."
  exit 0
fi

The problem with this logic is that there could be changes to cudf dependencies without changes to cudf itself, and the only way to pick up those changes is to run the submodule sync. That will build with -Dlibcudf.dependency.mode=latest causing any new versions of cudf dependencies to be picked up in the pinned versions file.

[pxLi]

Eliminating the check that skips certain runs and executing the build every time (validate part), or comparing the latest commits across all RAPIDS ecosystem projects, might help resolve the issue.

Currently, with the patch framework, each submodule-sync run takes approximately 2.5 hours (to run the validate to update cudf-pins would cost ~1hr). The check was initially added to conserve resources, do you have any suggestions for this? thank you