This enhances external-tests logic, ensuring that destructive tests
have retries and some context to pinpoint failures, and that failed-state
services are reset between iterations.
This tweaks the release GH workflow further so that it only triggers
when the `configure.ac` file (which owns the version) changes.
Plus it properly checkouts the PR branch to avoid wrongly looking
at a synthetic merge commit.
This fixes a few un-idiomatic bits in Rust bupsplit code, getting rid
of some unchecked casts and an assert statement.
Closes: #1502
Approved by: cgwalters
Luca BRUNO