Gofer

A CLI utility to help you keep your project's ever-changing dependency versions up to date.

The Name

According to the dictionary: gofer - an employee whose duties include running errands

The tool is also written in Go, a language with a recognizable gopher mascot

Motivation

For the last 2 years I maintained the kismatic project, a Kubernetes cluster lifecycle management tool.

As the project grew the process of checking for new docker image versions and Github project releases became pretty time consuming. The idea for a tool that would automate that process was born.

Prerequisites

Using a Docker container

• docker installed
• if desired add command to your path:

echo 'docker run                                    \
  -v $(pwd):/gofer                                  \
  -e GOOGLE_ACCESS_TOKEN=$GOOGLE_ACCESS_TOKEN       \
  dkoshkin/gofer:stable $@ ' > /usr/local/bin/gofer \
&& chmod +x /usr/local/bin/gofer

Using a binary

• a Linux or macOS

# for Linux
wget https://github.com/dkoshkin/gofer/releases/download/$VERSION/gofer-linux-amd64 -O /usr/local/bin/gofer
# for macOS
wget https://github.com/dkoshkin/gofer/releases/download/$VERSION/gofer-darwin-amd64 -O /usr/local/bin/gofer

Usage

1. Initialize an empty config file in ./.gofer/config.yaml

gofer init -f ./.gofer/config.yaml

Will result in ./.gofer/config.yaml:

apiversion: v0.1
dependencies: []

2. Add a new docker dependency with an optional --mask (a regular expression) and --type.
   The --type will be inferred from the name but can be set explicitly or set to manual to for unsupported dependencies.
   Note when set to manual the dig command will skip the dependency when fetching latest version.

gofer add busybox 1.28.1 --mask "1.28.[0-9]+" --type docker

Will result in ./.gofer/config.yaml:

apiversion: v0.1
dependencies:
- name: busybox
  type: docker
  version: 1.28.1
  mask: 1.28.[0-9]+

IMPORTANT when fetching versions for gcr.io docker images set:

export GOOGLE_ACCESS_TOKEN=`gcloud auth print-access-token`

3. Fetch the latest versions of all dependencies

gofer dig

Will result in ./.gofer/config.yaml:

apiversion: v0.1
dependencies:
- name: busybox
  type: docker
  version: 1.28.1
  latestVersion: 1.28.4
  mask: 1.28.[0-9]+

Example

A more complete config.yaml example available here.

Supported Dependencies

• docker - depending on the implementation of the registry the mechanism to provide the credentials will be different
  • dockerhub
  • gcr.io
  • quay.io
  • private registry - (in progress)
• github - (in progress)
• manual - the dig command will skip this dependency when fetching latest version

Development

make vendor
make test
# build a docker container
make build-container
# or build a binary to bin/
make build-binary