StarlingX/DebianBuildEnvironment

StarlingX Build Tools
The Debian build is completed using a set of containers designed to run in a Kubernetes environment. To facilitate this we are currently making use of Minikube and Helm, later on we will provide versions of the Helm Charts to allow for running builds directly on Kubernetes or StarlingX.

There are five containers required to complete a build:


 * stx-builder: main developer build container.
 * stx-pkgbuilder: Debian package builder (uses sbuild).
 * stx-repomgr: Debian local repository archive (uses aptly)
 * stx-lat-tool: Debian image builder
 * stx-docker: Docker in Docker (build docker images)

At a high level the StarlingX ISO image creation flow involves the following general steps (assuming you have already configured Docker on your system).


 * 1) Install Minikube and Helm.
 * 2) Build or download the StarlingX k8s development environment.
 * 3) Enter the stx-builder pod/container to triger the building task.
 * 4) Build packages/ISO creation.

NOTE: the build system requires a Linux system with Docker and python 3.x installed. Building on Windows is not supported -- please use a Virtual Machine if necessary. The steps on this page have been tested on CentOS 7 and Ubuntu Focal.

Configure build environment
We need to create and start the build containers, which requires some additional configuration described below.

Install Minikube and Helm
Install Minikube to support the local k8s framework for building. Install Helm tools to manage the Helm Charts required to start/stop/upgrade the pods or the deployments for the StarlingX Building system. Before installing these components please make sure that Docker is available in your environment.

Install minikube (https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/start/):

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64 sudo install minikube-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/minikube

Note: as of this writing minikube v 1.22.0 is current.

Note: minikube requires at least 2 CPU cores.

Alternatively, we can also use a third-party Minikube binary:

curl -LO http://kubernetes.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/minikube/releases/v1.20.0/minikube-linux-amd64 sudo install minikube-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/minikube

Install Helm -- you can select the version listed here or the latest released version:

curl -LO https://get.helm.sh/helm-v3.6.2-linux-amd64.tar.gz   tar xvf helm-v3.6.2-linux-amd64.tar.gz    sudo mv linux-amd64/helm /usr/local/bin/

Add your user account to docker group:

sudo usermod -aG docker $(id -un) && newgrp docker

Install repo
https://gerrit.googlesource.com/git-repo/

Export environment variables
export PROJECT="stx-env" export USER_NAME="" export USER_EMAIL=" " export STX_BUILD_HOME="/home/${USER}/${PROJECT}" export REPO_ROOT="${STX_BUILD_HOME}"/repo export REPO_ROOT_SUBDIR="localdisk/designer/${USER}/${PROJECT}" export STX_PLATFORM="minikube" export MINIKUBENAME="minikube-${USER}" export MANIFEST_URL="https://opendev.org/starlingx/manifest.git" export MANIFEST_BRANCH="master" export MANIFEST="default.xml"
 * 1) STX_BUILD_HOME should be set to a directory owned by your userid
 * 2) the build home needs to have at least 200Gb of free space to build all packages and iso
 * 1) MINIKUBE
 * 1) Manifest/Repo Options:
 * 2) STX MASTER
 * 1) STX MASTER
 * 1) STX MASTER

For more details about the STX environment variables click here.

Create directories
Create the $STX_BUILD_HOME directory, you may need sudo privileges if using /build

e.g: sudo mkdir -p /build/${USER} sudo chown ${USER}: /build/${USER}

mkdir -p $STX_BUILD_HOME cd $STX_BUILD_HOME

Initialize repo
mkdir -p $REPO_ROOT_SUBDIR ln -s $REPO_ROOT_SUBDIR $REPO_ROOT cd $REPO_ROOT repo init -u ${MANIFEST_URL} -b ${MANIFEST_BRANCH} -m ${MANIFEST} repo sync
 * 1) create REPO_ROOT_SUBDIR and symlink
 * 2) symlink is a helper as minikube mounts the stx_build_home as its workspace
 * 3) so it works as a shortcut to access the repos
 * 1) download and sync the repos

Init and setup STX
The build tools comes with a script, import-stx, which sets up your PATH and other environment as necessary. This script must be sourced before attempting to use any tools:

There's a number of environment variables you can set prior to sourcing this file, please feel free to review the script and import-stx.README for a full list.

WARNING: minikube can't work if your $HOME directory points to an NFS location, we need to point it to some other local file system by defining $MINIKUBE_HOME in the environment before sourcing import-stx.

The build expects a configuration file, ``stx.conf`` (example) to exist at the root of the build tools working directory. It is a key/value file containing various build options. The ``stx config`` command may be used to add/modify entries in the file.

cd stx-tools source import-stx stx config --add builder.myuname $(id -un) stx config --add builder.uid $(id -u) stx config --add project.gituser ${USER} stx config --add project.gitemail ${USER_EMAIL} stx config --add project.name ${PROJECT} stx config --show stx config --help
 * 1) Init stx tool
 * 1) Update stx config
 * 2) Align the builder container to use your user/UID
 * 1) Embedded in ~/localrc of the build container
 * 1) This will be included in the name of your build container and the basename for $MY_REPO_ROOT_DIR
 * 1) Show usage information

Start/Create build containers
The ``stx-init-env`` script will download or re-create build (docker) containers, and start them:

cd repo/stx-tools ./stx-init-env stx control status
 * 1) Monitor the status until they are running:
 * 1) You should see 5 containers on Running state

Once docker images are available locally, you can start & stop them using the ``stx`` tool:

stx control start         # start builder PODs if not running stx control status      # display POD status stx control stop         # stop PODs

WARNING: any changes to ``stx.conf`` or (``stx config add`` etc) requires that the PODs are re-started. f you want to make changes to the environment in the build container, use ‘stx control stop’, then ‘stx config’ to adjust the variables, and re-start the containers.

stx control stop stx config add <...> stx control start

The script pulls build containers from DockerHub by default, where a new version is built once per day (ie default container images may be slightly out of date when you pull them). You can force a local re-build as follows:

stx control stop cd repo/stx-tools ./stx-init-env --rebuild

Entering & controlling Pods
Once the containers are running, one can enter them (think ``docker exec <...> /bin/bash). While there are 5 containers, most build tasks are driven from the "builder" container, which is the default when using the ``stx`` tool:

# enter the "builder" container stx shell

you can enter other containers as follows

stx shell --container [builder|pkgbuilder|lat|repomgr|docker]

Use ``exit`` command to exit from the node to host environment.

You can use the ``stx control`` command to start/stop & monitor builder POD status:

# control the Pods stx control start stx control stop stx control status

# more info stx control --help

The ``status`` command will include Helm status, including deployments and the pods. You can use that information to manually enter or troubleshoot POds using munikube or kubectl.

Every time you start/restart Pods
Execute these mandatory steps inside the builder:

sudo apt-get update git config --global user.name "Firstname Lastname" git config --global user.email "Your email"

NOTE: you may see the following errors from apt. You can ignore this and continue.

E: Failed to fetch http://stx-stx-repomgr:80/deb-local-source/dists/bullseye/main/source/Sources 404 Not Found [IP: 10.102.135.193 80] E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

Build packages/ISO creation
The builder is the container where you will perform most of the actions, such as launching the task of building packages and images.

stx shell

Refresh the source tree
The StarlingX source tree consists of multiple git repositories. The tool ‘repo’ is used to sync these repositories, if required you can sync the repos from inside the builder:

cd $MY_REPO_ROOT_DIR repo sync

After the ‘repo sync’ is done, check the below directory:

ls $MY_REPO ls $MY_REPO/stx ls $MY_REPO_ROOT_DIR/stx-tools

Before running 'build-pkgs':

Run below command to download the sources of all buildable packages by scanning the repo root $MY_REPO/stx the download directory is: $STX_MIRROR

downloader -s -B std,rt

All the below lists with build types will be scanned in the repo root $MY_REPO/stx:


 * debian_pkg_dirs
 * debian_pkg_dirs_rt
 * debian_pkg_dirs_installer

Download 3rd-party tar & deb files
Run below command to download the debian binary packages (distribution: bullseye) into directory $STX_MIRROR/binaries:

downloader -b -B std,rt

All the below lists of binary packages will be downloaded:

$MY_REPO_ROOT_DIR/stx-tools/debian-mirror-tools/config/debian/common/base-bullseye.lst $MY_REPO_ROOT_DIR/stx-tools/debian-mirror-tools/config/debian/ /os-std.lst $MY_REPO_ROOT_DIR/stx-tools/debian-mirror-tools/config/debian/ /os-rt.lst

You can also run below command to download both sources and binaries:

downloader -B std,rt # To check all options: downloader --help

Currently, the apt sources used to download packages are in the '/etc/apt/sources.list' file in the builder container.

Verify that the local repos are created
repo_manage.py list INFO:repo_manage:No remote repo INFO:repo_manage:3 local repos: INFO:repo_manage:deb-local-build : bullseye : main INFO:repo_manage:deb-local-binary : bullseye : main INFO:repo_manage:deb-local-source : bullseye : main

NOTE: All 3 repos should be seen only after build-pkgs [-p ] is done at a later time.

Build packages
The 'build-pkgs' has two phases based on the Debian package's build:

1) Check the digest of package's source meta data, for example:

if package 'dhcp' in cache: if sha256 digest of the folder (/path/to/stx/integ/base/dhcp/debian) have not changed: if the dsc file of package dhcp exists: reuse the existing dsc file return create dsc file for package 'dhcp' and add the checksum to cache

2) Build avoidance is enabled by default for this phase, the build option '-c' will turn 'build avoidance' off.

if build avoidance is enabled: check whether there is build stamp for this package: if Yes, skip the build and return Send the build request for the package to pkgbuilder container

To Build packages:

build-pkgs build-pkgs --clean But be careful, '--clean' not only cleans the whole build directory "/localdisk/loadbuild/ / /{std,rt}" but also cleans the local repository "deb-local-build". This means all the starlingX packages will be built from scratch and this will take time. If you just want to resume the previous build, please run without '-c': build-pkgs --parallel  --poll_interval  --max_make_jobs  build-pkgs -p build-pkgs -c -p build-image
 * 1) Build all packages
 * 2) this should rebuild all packages (std and rt)
 * 1) If you want to clean and build all:
 * 1) build-pkgs
 * 1) Build packages in parallel
 * 1) To define the interval to poll the packages build status during parallel build:
 * 1) To limit the number of make jobs for a package:
 * 1) Build single package
 * 1) Build single package cleaning previous build
 * 1) Once the packages are ready you can build the iso

Build ISO
Once you have built all of the packages you can build the iso by running the following command:

build-image ls -al /localdisk/deploy/*.iso

Log files
While inside the build container, log files may be found here:


 * /localdisk/builder.log /localdisk/pkgbuilder.log - top-level build controller log files
 * ${MY_WORKSPACE}/ / /*.build' - individual package build logs