Buildy McBuildface

What in the world is this?

This repo contains experimental build tools which represent an attempt to speed up Triton service image builds. To understand this speed up, one needs to understand how builds work without/prior to this.

When building an image the process is (only including steps relevant to speed-up here):

• Select a jenkins agent (running a jenkins-agent image) with the appropriate image (must use the same architecture and pkgsrc as the underlying image that the Triton service will use).
• Checkout the appropriate version of the service's code.
• Do an npm isntall to non-reproducibly populate the node_modules directory with the appropriate modules and binaries (add-ons like dtrace-provider).
• Build a proto directory which includes the source code from the repo, the node_modules directory and some other bits.
• Have MG install the sdcnode build, and some other bloatware (config-agent, registrar, etc.) into the build.
• Tar up the proto directory.
• Determine a package to use to provision a temporary VM in JPC.
• Create a temporary VM in JPC using the target image (e.g. sdc-multiarch-15.4.1) and the package determined above.
• Wait (up to 30 minutes) for the VM to be created then;
• Unpack the proto tarball into the root directory of the VM.
• Install the pkgsrc packages that the service defines.
• Cleanup junk left behind from booting the VM.
• Use sdc-createimagefrommachine to use cloudapi to create an image out of the temporary JPC VM.
• Wait (up to 10 minutes) for the image creation to complete.
• Delete the temporary JPC VM.
• Download the created image and manifest from Manta.
• Modify the manifest of the created manifest.
• Push the updated manifest to manta.
• Delete the temporary VM image from JPC.
• Use the image and manifest (e.g. upload to updates.joyent.com)

With the tools here, the process is intended to change to:

• Select a jenkins agent (running a jenkins-agent image) with the appropriate image (must use the same architecture and pkgsrc as the underlying image that the Triton service will use). This agent must have a delegated dataset.
• Checkout the appropriate version of the service's code.
• Do an npm isntall to non-reproducibly populate the node_modules directory with the appropriate modules and binaries (add-ons like dtrace-provider).
• Build a proto directory which includes the source code from the repo, the node_modules directory, the sdcnode build, and all the required bloatware.
• Run the bin/build tool to:
  • Import the target image into the delegated dataset under zones/<vm_uuid>/data/<image_uuid>.
  • Create a "zone analog" dataset by cloning the image.
  • Use rsync to copy from the proto directory to the zone analog dataset.
  • Chroot into the zone analog dataset and run pkg_add to install the packages.
  • Cleanup any cruft left behind by pkgsrc.
  • Use the imgadm image creation logic to create an image from the zone analog using manifest parameters passed in.
  • Delete the zone analog dataset.
• Use the image and manifest (e.g. upload to updates.joyent.com)

The reasons this is much faster and more reliable include:

• We can skip tarring up the proto directory and sending over the network.
• All build operations take place within the jenkins agent zone. No VMs need to be provisioned.
• We don't need to wait on VM creation.
• We don't need to cleanup junk left behind by booting the VM since the VM is never booted.
• We don't need to wait on image creation.
• We don't need to download the image and manifest, or push the modified manifest. (Since they were built locally).
• MG is no longer needed so the total amount of code involved is reduced.

With experiments done so far, this offers drastic improvements in image creation times. It also should be more reliable since there are far fewer moving parts and fewer external dependencies.

Where did the name come from?

The name is an homage to the great Boaty Mcboatface. At the time the name was chosen, "buildymcbuildface" also had no Google results.

How do I try to use it?

You'll need to modify your Makefile.

TODO: explain how to use:

bin/build

in your project.

Does it come with a warranty?

No.

What's going on with lib/imgadm?

This tool uses imgadm but unfortunately it needs to run on ancient platforms. As such, it needs to include imgadm. Even more unfortunately, it's really hard to get this to work properly with npm because imgadm ships its node modules in smartos-live.git. The current "solution" is to just have lib/imgadm/node_modules.tgz and have that unpacked via the npm postinstall script. With it unpacked in the repo, npm deletes those files which breaks the tool.

At some point in the future, it might be nice to pull imgadm out from smartos-live and have it be a proper npm module. At that point we could just add it to our package.json here and point to a version with these changes.