libvirt/ci/README.rst
Andrea Bolognani 6190c14151 ci: Enable Cirrus CI integration
We use cirrus-run to trigger Cirrus CI jobs from GitLab CI jobs,
making it possible to extend our platform coverage to include
FreeBSD without having to maintain our own runners; additionally,
we'll be able to ditch Travis CI and, since results for Cirrus CI
jobs are reflected back to the GitLab CI jobs that triggered them,
we will be able to get all information from a single dashboard.

The FreeBSD and macOS job definitions can be improved further: for
example, we will want to enable caching to speed up builds, and
ultimately we should figure out a way to generate at least part of
them, notably the list of packages to be installed, using lcitool.
All of that will happen in later patches: for now, this is good
enough to start using Cirrus CI.

Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Erik Skultety <eskultet@redhat.com>
2020-06-10 10:30:56 +02:00

2.4 KiB

CI for libvirt

This document provides some information related to the CI capabilities for the libvirt project.

Cirrus CI integration

libvirt currently supports three non-Linux operating systems: Windows, FreeBSD and macOS. Windows cross-builds can be prepared on Linux by using MinGW, but for both FreeBSD and macOS we need to use the actual operating system, and unfortunately GitLab shared runners are currently not available for either.

To work around this limitation, we take advantage of Cirrus CI's free offering: more specifically, we use the cirrus-run script to trigger Cirrus CI jobs from GitLab CI jobs so that the workaround is almost entirely transparent to users and there's no need to constantly check two separate CI dashboards.

There is, however, some one-time setup required. If you want FreeBSD and macOS builds to happen when you push to your GitLab repository, you need to

  • set up a GitHub repository for the project, eg. yourusername/libvirt. This repository needs to exist for cirrus-run to work, but it doesn't need to be kept up to date, so you can create it and then forget about it;

  • enable the Cirrus CI GitHub app for your GitHub account;

  • sign up for Cirrus CI. It's enough to log into the website using your GitHub account;

  • grab an API token from the Cirrus CI settings page;

  • in the CI/CD / Variables section of the settings page for your GitLab repository, create two new variables:

    • CIRRUS_GITHUB_REPO, containing the name of the GitHub repository created earlier, eg. yourusername/libvirt;
    • CIRRUS_API_TOKEN, containing the Cirrus CI API token generated earlier. This variable must be marked as Masked, because anyone with knowledge of it can impersonate you as far as Cirrus CI is concerned.

    Neither of these variables should be marked as Protected, because in general you'll want to be able to trigger Cirrus CI builds from non-protected branches.

Once this one-time setup is complete, you can just keep pushing to your GitLab repository as usual and you'll automatically get the additional CI coverage.