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Building a continuous-integration Android build server on FreeBSD: Part two: configuring Gitlab-CI

November 2016.

In this series of blog posts, we're going to create a Android build server for continuous integration on FreeBSD.

Part one will explain how to build Android APKs using Gradle on FreeBSD using the Linux emulation.
Part two (this post) will explain how to configure Gitlab-CI to be able to run builds automatically for each commit.
Part three will explain how to configure Jenkins to be able to run builds and email the APKs to people.

Step 1: Install, configure and register the Gitlab-CI runner

Most of the information of that step comes from the original documentation.

Create a nice user for the runner:


# pw group add -n gitlab-runner
# pw user add -n gitlab-runner -g gitlab-runner -s /usr/local/bin/bash
# mkdir /home/gitlab-runner
# chown gitlab-runner:gitlab-runner /home/gitlab-runner

Download the runner executable (or build it yourself (see the end of the post)), and mark it as such:


# fetch -o /usr/local/bin/gitlab-ci-multi-runner https://gitlab-ci-multi-runner-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/latest/binaries/gitlab-ci-multi-runner-freebsd-amd64
# chmod +x /usr/local/bin/gitlab-ci-multi-runner

Create and chmod the log file:


# touch /var/log/gitlab_runner.log && sudo chown gitlab-runner:gitlab-runner /var/log/gitlab_runner.log

Create the rc-script (/usr/local/etc/rc.d/gitlab_runner):


#!/bin/sh
# PROVIDE: gitlab_runner
# REQUIRE: DAEMON NETWORKING
# BEFORE:
# KEYWORD:

. /etc/rc.subr

name="gitlab_runner"
rcvar="gitlab_runner_enable"

load_rc_config $name

user="gitlab-runner"
user_home="/home/gitlab-runner"
command="/usr/local/bin/gitlab-ci-multi-runner run"
pidfile="/var/run/${name}.pid"

start_cmd="gitlab_runner_start"
stop_cmd="gitlab_runner_stop"
status_cmd="gitlab_runner_status"

gitlab_runner_start()
{
    export USER=${user}
    export HOME=${user_home}
    if checkyesno ${rcvar}; then
        cd ${user_home}
        /usr/sbin/daemon -u ${user} -p ${pidfile} ${command} > /var/log/gitlab_runner.log 2>&1
    fi
}

gitlab_runner_stop()
{
    if [ -f ${pidfile} ]; then
        kill `cat ${pidfile}`
    fi
}

gitlab_runner_status()
{
    if [ ! -f ${pidfile} ] || kill -0 `cat ${pidfile}`; then
        echo "Service ${name} is not running."
    else
        echo "${name} appears to be running."
    fi
}

run_rc_command $1

Set the rc script as being executable:


chmod +x /usr/local/etc/rc.d/gitlab_runner


# sudo -u gitlab-runner -H /usr/local/bin/gitlab-ci-multi-runner register

Please enter the gitlab-ci coordinator URL (e.g. https://gitlab.com/ci):
https://gitlab.example.com/ci

Please enter the gitlab-ci token for this runner:
sqzGW7_PgmarZ3FsSsUa

Please enter the gitlab-ci description for this runner:
[androidbuild]: Example Android build machine

Please enter the gitlab-ci tags for this runner (comma separated):
android
Registering runner... succeeded                     runner=sqzGW7_T

Please enter the executor: docker-ssh+machine, docker, docker-ssh, parallels, shell, ssh, virtualbox, docker+machine:
shell

Runner registered successfully. Feel free to start it, but if it's running already the config should be automatically reloaded!

Enable the runner service and start it:


# sysrc -f /etc/rc.conf "gitlab_runner_enable=YES" 
# service gitlab_runner start

Step 2: add the CI configuration to your Android project

Create a file named .gitlab-ci.yml and configure it to your needs.


before_script:
  - export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/androidbuild/android-sdk-linux/build-tools/23.0.2/lib/"
  - export ANDROID_HOME="/home/androidbuild/android-sdk-linux/"

prod:
  only:
    - master
  script:
    - ./gradlew assembleRelease
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - Example/build/outputs/
    expire_in: 1 week

This example file will trigger a build when branch master is updaded, and it will save the artifacts for one week.

Bonus: compiling the runner ourselves

If there's something I don't like, it's downloading executables from the internet when I can build them myself.
Let's build that Gitlab runner ourselves.

Install golang:


# make -C /usr/ports/lang/go install clean

Create a working go directory structure:


% mkdir -p ~/gowork/src/gitlab.com/gitlab-org/
% cd ~/gowork/src/gitlab.com/gitlab-org/
% setenv GOPATH ~/gowork
% setenv PATH "${PATH}:${GOPATH}/bin"

Get the code from Gitlab (checkout the version you want to build):


% git clone https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ci-multi-runner.git
% cd gitlab-ci-multi-runner/
% git checkout tags/v1.5.2

Build:


% gmake deps docker
% gmake build_simple
% file "out/binaries/gitlab-ci-multi-runner"
out/binaries/gitlab-ci-multi-runner: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (FreeBSD), statically linked, not stripped

Install (as root):


# install -m 755 out/binaries/gitlab-ci-multi-runner /usr/local/bin/gitlab-ci-multi-runner

Done.