gitlab-build-images/README.md

GitLab Build Images

This repository is used to build docker images that are used to build and test various parts of GitLab:

1. Build Omnibus packages
2. Test GitLab-CE/EE project
3. Build gitlab-org/www-gitlab-com project

Adding a new image

There are two methods to adding a new image:

1. Use a docker buildfile.
2. Use a custom image with versioned features.

Use a docker buildfile

A bespoke image is one that uses it's own Dockerfile. In the interests of avoiding repetition, it's better to use the custom docker build if possible.

Assuming the image you want to add is called new-image:

1. Add a test task: new-image test: *test_build.
2. Add a new build task: new-image: *build_and_deploy.
3. Add a Dockerfile: Dockerfile.new-image.

Use a custom image with versioned features

To add a new image to the build, edit .gitlab-ci.yml.

With custom images, the name of the image is used to define the contents (as opposed to use a bespoke Dockerfile build).

For this reason, the name needs to be correctly defined.

The name is defined as [feature]-[version] pairs, separated by -.

Here are some example build names:

1. ruby-2.1-git-2.7
2. ruby-2.3.3-golang-1.8-git-2.7-chrome-60.0-node-7.1-postgresql-9.6
3. ruby-2.4.1-golang-1.8-git-2.7-node-7.1-postgresql-9.6

The first pair represents the base image and version. So ruby-2.1-... will use the ruby:2.1 base image, while golang-1.8 will use the golang:1.8 base image.

Each of the following parts represents another feature and version. Available options are:

1. golang
2. git
3. chrome
4. node
5. yarn
6. postgres
7. terraform
8. ansible
9. graphicsmagick

Adding a new build

As an example, if you want to add new image for Ruby 2.4 with git 2.14 and golang 1.9, the name would be ruby-2.4-golang-1.9-git-2.14.

1. Add a test task: ruby-2.4-golang-1.9-git-2.14 test: *test_custom
2. Add a new build task: ruby-2.4-golang-1.9-git-2.14: *build_and_deploy_custom

Forcing custom images to be rebuilt

By default, once a custom image is built, tagged and pushed to the registry, it's not rebuilt to ensure an upstream dependency doesn't end up breaking our images unexpectedly.

For reference, this happened in the past: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/205192

In the rare case where the Dockerfile.custom file is updated and all custom images shoulld be rebuild, you can start a new pipeline and set the variable FORCE_BUILD to true.

Note regarding Google Chrome

Google has a policy of yanking older versions of Google Chrome from their PPA whenever a new major version is released. To help maintain consistent build images, there is a CI step that saves the latest Google Chrome .deb into an S3 bucket. The install for Chrome will attempt to retrieve from the bucket if it cannot find the file in the apt repository. See scripts/cache-google-chrome for more details.

Contributing

See Contributing