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coreos/ignition

Development

  1. Modifying the config spec
  2. Vendor
  3. Running Blackbox Tests
  4. Test Host System Dependencies
  5. Writing Blackbox Tests
  6. Releasing Ignition
  7. Marking an experimental spec as stable
    1. Making the experimental package stable
    2. Creating the new experimental package
    3. Update all relevant places to use the new experimental package
    4. Update the blackbox tests
    5. Update docs
    6. External Tests

A Go 1.11+ environment and the blkid.h headers are required. Using go 1.10 may work, but isn’t directly supported since it does not support go modules.

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install libblkid-dev

# RPM-based
sudo dnf install libblkid-devel

Modifying the config spec

Install schematyper to generate Go structs from JSON schema definitions.

go get -u github.com/idubinskiy/schematyper

Modify config/v${LATEST_EXPERIMENTAL}/schema/ignition.json as necessary. This file adheres to the json schema spec.

Run the generate script to create config/vX_Y/types/schema.go. Once a configuration is stabilized (i.e. it is no longer -experimental), it is considered frozen. The json schemas used to create stable specs are kept for reference only and should not be changed.

./generate

Add whatever validation logic is necessary to config/v${LATEST_EXPERIMENTAL}/types, modify the translator at config/v${LATEST_EXPERIMENTAL}/translate/translate.go to handle the changes if necessary, and update config/v${LATEST_EXPERIMENTAL/translate/translate_test.go to properly test the changes.

Finally, make whatever changes are necessary to internal to handle the new spec.

Vendor

Ignition uses go modules. Additionally, we keep all of the dependencies vendored in the repo. This has a few benefits:

  • Ensures modification to go.mod is intentional, since go build can update it without -mod=vendor
  • Ensures all builds occur with the same set of sources, since go build will only pull in sources for the targeted GOOS and GOARCH
  • Simplifies packaging in some cases since some package managers restrict network access during compilation.

After modifying go.mod run make vendor to update the vendor directory.

Group changes to go.mod, go.sum and vendor/ in their own commit; do not make code changes and vendoring changes in the same commit.

Running Blackbox Tests

./build_blackbox_tests
sudo sh -c 'PATH=$PWD/bin/amd64:$PATH ./tests.test'

To run a subset of the blackbox tests, pass a regular expression into -test.run. As an example:

sudo sh -c 'PATH=$PWD/bin/amd64:$PATH ./tests.test -test.run TestIgnitionBlackBox/Preemption.*'

You can get a list of available tests to run by passing the -list option, like so:

sudo sh -c 'PATH=$PWD/bin/amd64:$PATH ./tests.test -list'

Test Host System Dependencies

The following packages are required by the Blackbox Test:

  • util-linux
  • dosfstools
  • e2fsprogs
  • btrfs-progs
  • xfsprogs
  • gdisk
  • coreutils
  • mdadm
  • libblkid-devel

Writing Blackbox Tests

To add a blackbox test create a function which yields a Test object. A Test object consists of the following fields:

Name: string

In: []Disk object, which describes the Disks that should be created before Ignition is run.

Out: []Disk object, which describes the Disks that should be present after Ignition is run.

MntDevices: MntDevice object, which describes any disk related variable replacements that need to be done to the Ignition config before Ignition is run. This is done so that disks which are created during the test run can be referenced inside of an Ignition config.

SystemDirFiles: []File object which describes the Files that should be written into Ignition’s system config directory before Ignition is run.

Config: string type where the specific config version should be replaced by $version and will be updated before Ignition is run.

ConfigMinVersion: string type which describes the minimum config version the test should be run with. Copies of the test will be generated for every version, inside the same major version, that is equal to or greater than the specified ConfigMinVersion. If the test should run only once with a specfic config version, leave this field empty and replace $version in the Config field with the desired version.

The test should be added to the init function inside of the test file. If the test module is being created then an init function should be created which registers the tests and the package must be imported inside of tests/registry/registry.go to allow for discovery.

UUIDs may be required in the following fields of a Test object: In, Out, and Config. Replace all GUIDs with GUID varaibles which take on the format $uuid<num> (e.g. $uuid123). Where <num> must be a positive integer. GUID variables with identical <num> fields will be replaced with identical GUIDs. For example, look at tests/positive/partitions/zeros.go.

Releasing Ignition

Create a new release checklist and follow the steps there.

Marking an experimental spec as stable

When an experimental version of the Ignition config spec (e.g.: 3.1.0-experimental) is to be declared stable (e.g. 3.1.0), there are a handful of changes that must be made to the code base. These changes should have the following effects:

  • Any configs with a version field set to the previously experimental version will no longer pass validation. For example, if 3.1.0-experimental is being marked as stable, any configs written for 3.1.0-experimental should have their version fields changed to 3.1.0, for Ignition will no longer accept them.
  • A new experimental spec version will be created. For example, if 3.1.0-experimental is being marked as stable, a new version of 3.2.0-experimental (or 4.0.0-experimental if backwards incompatible changes are being made) will now be accepted, and start to accumulate new changes to the spec.
  • The new stable spec and the new experimental spec will be identical except for the accepted versions. The new experimental spec is a direct copy of the old experimental spec, and no new changes to the spec have been made yet, so initially the two specs will have the same fields and semantics.
  • The HTTP Accept header that Ignition uses whenever fetching a config will be updated to advertise the new stable spec.
  • New features will be documented in the Upgrading Configs documentation.

The changes that are required to achieve these effects are typically the following:

Making the experimental package stable

  • Rename config/vX_Y_experimental to config/vX_Y, and update the golang package statements
  • Drop _experimental from all imports in config/vX_Y
  • Update MaxVersion in config/vX_Y/types/config.go to delete the PreRelease field
  • Update config/vX_Y/config_test.go to test that the new stable version is valid and the old experimental version is invalid
  • Update the Accept header in internal/resource/url.go to specify the new spec version.

Creating the new experimental package

  • Copy config/vX_Y into config/vX_(Y+1)_experimental, and update the golang package statements
  • Update all config/vX_Y imports in config/vX_(Y+1)_experimental to config/vX_(Y+1)_experimental
  • Update MaxVersion in config/vX_(Y+1)_experimental/types/config.go to have the correct major/minor versions and PreRelease set to "experimental"
  • Update config/vX_(Y+1)_experimental/config_test.go to test that the new stable version is invalid and the new experimental version is valid
  • Update config/vX_(Y+1)_experimental/translate/translate.go to translate from the previous stable version. Update the old_types import, delete all functions except translateIgnition and Translate, and ensure translateIgnition translates the entire Ignition struct.
  • Update config/config.go to handle the new stable and experimental versions.
  • Update config/config_test.go to add the new experimental version to TestConfigStructure.
  • Update generate to generate the new stable and experimental versions, and rerun generate.

Update all relevant places to use the new experimental package

Next, all places that imported config/vX_Y_experimental should be updated to config/vX_(Y+1)_experimental.

Update tests/register/register.go in the following ways:

  • Add import config/vX_Y
  • Update import config/vX_Y_experimental to config/vX_(Y+1)_experimental
  • Add config/vX_Y’s identifier to configVersions in Register()

Update the blackbox tests

Update the blackbox tests.

  • Bump the invalid -experimental version in the relevant VersionOnlyConfig test in tests/negative/general/config.go.
  • Find all tests using X.Y.0-experimental and alter them to use X.Y.0.
  • Update the Accept header checks in tests/servers.go to specify the new spec version.

Update docs

Finally, update docs.

  • Rename docs/configuration-vX_Y-experimental.md to docs/configuration-vX_Y.md and make a copy as docs/configuration-vX_(Y+1)_experimental.md.
  • In docs/configuration-vX_Y.md, drop -experimental from the version number in the heading and the ignition.version field, and drop the prerelease warning.
  • In docs/configuration-vX_(Y+1)_experimental.md, update the version of the experimental spec in the heading and the ignition.version field.
  • Add a section to docs/migrating-configs.md.
  • In docs/specs.md, update the list of stable and experimental spec versions, listing the latest stable release first.
  • Update the nav_order: X field in the Jekyll front matter in every docs/configuration-v*.md to keep the configuration specs in a decreasing order with the latest stable configuration first. Always keep the experimental config spec last.

External Tests

If there are any external kola tests that were using the now stabilized experimental spec that are not part of the Ignition repo (e.x. tests in the fedora-coreos-config repo) then CI will fail for the spec stabilization PR.

  • Add any tests using the experimental spec to the fedora-coreos-config denylist and re-run CI
  • Merge the spec stabilization PR
  • Perform a new Ignition release
  • Bump the Ignition packaging
  • Vendor the new Ignition release into coreos-assembler
  • Update the lockfile on the testing-devel branch in fedora-coreos-config to use the new Ignition release & the external test to use the new stabilized spec version, removing it from the denylist.