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2019-03-06

bacillμs - a simple build automation server written in Go

Most non-trivial software projects that do rapid releases use a build automation server. One of the most popular solutions for this is Jenkins. There are many others.

While Jenkins is easy to install and use in my experience, I wanted to learn some others to broaden my expertise, like Concourse https://concourse-ci.org/ or buildbot https://github.com/buildbot. The former turned out to be hellish to install and I burned a few evenings hitting many head-scratching dead-ends in the start up config; forums were filled with users asking the dev team for updated installation instructions, met with brusk dismissals if one wanted to use it outside of the dev-blessed containers (ie., use our black box, never mind how it really works). The latter, while easier to get up and running in a 'hello world' configuration, seemed difficult to configure further into a real-world setup. It seemed to me that these things, in general, are overly complicated.

So, in a fit of insanity I wrote my own simple build automation server in Go. No containers, java VM, or dependencies.. Use whatever scripting language you want. Total line count is under 1k.

Of course, it's nowhere near production quality, and probably violates every go coding standard there is, but it does the essential things one might expect: responding to git triggers or webhooks from web-based systems like gogs.io or gitlab, a web dashboard, viewing of running and completed jobs and their artifacts. Jobs may be scheduled (externally via cron), or launched manually from the dashboard. Jobs can be parameterized, with a simple but powerful form notation to allow int, string, and boolean job parameters. Build artifacts are archived and browseable from the dashboard. There's even a simple way to display stages of a job's run in the live view, aka a simple 'pipeline' status.

Suggestions welcome.

bacillus main dashboard


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