Buildbox Containers

Buildbox

The idea behind Buildbox is to create an immutable and portable build environment. The buildbox container can build, test and deply any software project, using Docker tools or dobi build automation.

You can run buildbox on any Docker host, locally or on cloud. To reduce build time, use volumes to mount internal Docker folders (like var/lib/docker) and different application folders (like node_modules, .maven, .ivy2, vendor and similar).

Buildbox is a single build node equiped with following tools:

• bash
• curl
• docker
• docker-compose
• dobi
• git
• jq
• vim
• wget

Recommended build flow:

1. Clone .git repository.
2. Run docker build ... to build any Docker images: builder, app, test containers.
3. Or use dobi build automation tool for Docker, read dobi docs

Challenges

• How to create multiple and independent buildfox environments running on same machine?
• How to provide convinient access to these buildboxes?

Solution

Each buildbox is dind Docker container enriched with additional tools. It is possible to use docker client with --host flag to connect to docker daemon running inside buildbox. In addition, it is possible to create special ssh, that allows to connect with ssh to the buildbox or to use web terminal to access buildbox terminal from browser

Try it on localhost

Run single buildbox with following command:

$ docker run -d --privileged --name buildbox \
    --hostname=buildbox-host \
    -p $12375:2375 \
    alexeiled/buildbox

Or run local_init.sh script, to start a new Docker registry mirror and three buildboxes and three ssh containers connected to these boxes.

$ ./local_init.sh