Remove barely useful manage_externals check and update test as necessary

The check is commented out and noted so that in the future a potentially
better check may be created instead

Author: islas

.github/workflows/test_workflow.yml

@@ -100,6 +100,17 @@ jobs:
         submodules: true
         ref: ${{ inputs.event_name == 'push' && github.ref || inputs.ref }}
 
+    ############################################################################
+    # WRF Specific
+    # More checkout, just do everything so we have it all at the ready. This unfortunately will limit testing 
+    # of on-the-fly checkouts
+    - name: Checkout extra via manage_externals
+      id  : manage_externals
+      run : |
+        cd main
+        ./tools/manage_externals/checkout_externals -e arch/Externals.cfg
+    ############################################################################
+
 
     # Immediately copy out to # of tests to do
     - name: Create testing directories

CMakeLists.txt

@@ -344,11 +344,14 @@ execute_process(
                 OUTPUT_FILE             ${LOG_FILE}
                 ERROR_FILE              ${LOG_FILE}
                 )
-if ( ${MANAGE_EXTERNALS_STATUS} AND NOT ${MANAGE_EXTERNALS_STATUS} EQUAL 0 )
-  message( FATAL_ERROR "Failed to checkout external repos via manage_externals" )
-else()
-  message( STATUS "Finished checking out external repos via manage_externals" )
-endif()
+# The manage_externals return code only informs critical failures and not whether the code
+# exists or not and so this check often leads to false positives (success) when failure
+# was expected
+# if ( ${MANAGE_EXTERNALS_STATUS} AND NOT ${MANAGE_EXTERNALS_STATUS} EQUAL 0 )
+#   message( FATAL_ERROR "Failed to checkout external repos via manage_externals" )
+# else()
+#   message( STATUS "Finished checking out external repos via manage_externals" )
+# endif()
 
 
 ################################################################################