Incorrect instructions in DEVELOPING.md to build Grype from source

[colton-freeman]

What happened:
When trying to build Grype from the source.tar I am running into an error go: build output "grype" already exists and is a directory

What you expected to happen:
After running go build ./cmd/grype Grype is now functional.

How to reproduce it (as minimally and precisely as possible):
trying to build in a Dockerfile. Using golang-1.21.8 as builder. I copy down the source.tar and then run the command suggested in the DEVELOPING.md it downloads the go.mod and then errors out. Trying to git clone produces same error.

Anything else we need to know?:
I have tried in multiple locations with the same error. Removing the grype directory obviously does not work ha.

Environment:

• Output of grype version:
• OS (e.g: cat /etc/os-release or similar):
• NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux"
  VERSION="9.3 (Plow)"
  ID="rhel"
  ID_LIKE="fedora"
  VERSION_ID="9.3"
  PLATFORM_ID="platform:el9"
  PRETTY_NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.3 (Plow)"
  ANSI_COLOR="0;31"
  LOGO="fedora-logo-icon"
  CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:9::baseos"
  HOME_URL="https://www.redhat.com/"
  DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/9"
  BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/"

REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT="Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9"
REDHAT_BUGZILLA_PRODUCT_VERSION=9.3
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT="Red Hat Enterprise Linux"
REDHAT_SUPPORT_PRODUCT_VERSION="9.3"

[kzantow]

I don't think we will be able to support this exact use case, since as you noted there is a grype directory and this is unlikely to change.

You have a couple options:

• Use go run ./cmd/grype, which is effectively what many of us do during development. You can make code changes and re-run this easily.
• Run make snapshot (after make bootstrap), which will build snapshot releases closest to what our release process does, but this is considerably slower as it builds binaries for all supported platforms.

It looks like we need to get the DEVELOPING.md updated.

[colton-freeman]

Ah, well thats a bummer. Neither of those use cases will work for us but thank you for the quick feedback. The install.sh build does work for us but was hoping for a source route. If need be you can feel free to close this issue.

[kzantow]

@colton-freeman you can also just build the binary with -o <binary-file-name>, for example:

go build -o build/grype ./cmd/grype

... will give you a binary named grype output in a build directory

[colton-freeman]

oh very nice. that might work for us, thank you.