conmake

README

conmake

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TL;DR

conmake is a 'build tool' similar to GNU Make which runs 'targets' inside containers. If you are interested just get it and try it.

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Hey! Thank you for visiting the repository of conmake! conmake is a kind of build tool similar to the well known GNU Make. Instead of executing 'target' directly on the host machine the commands defined by a step are executed inside a container. Therefore the tool is named 'conmake' as a combination of 'container' and 'make'.
To define the build steps conmake uses a kind of Makefile called 'Conmakefile' in a YAML format. Beside the build steps you can define so called workstations which define basically the build environment. A good analogy for these workstations are different tools like a circular saw or a vise on a working bench.

... Ok, but why?

The idea of running these build steps isolated in a container is to give the developer a clean fresh environment every time running a build step. The container can be seen as a sandbox. This approach makes it also possible to share well defined environments in a team and can also be very useful when developing services which will be running in a container later.

... How does this work?

What conmake basically does is to spin up a workstation in form of a container based on the definition in the given Conmakefile. This can either be a workstation defined in the workstation section of the conmakefile or a reference to an docker image.

An example project can be found inside the be found in the example directory.

Terms

• Conmakefile
  A Conmakefile mainly defines Steps as targets to be executed and Workstations to be used by steps when they are triggered.

• Workstation
  A Workstation defines an environment for executing a Step

• Step
  A Step describes the things you want to do with your source code.

Installation

Currently conmake just runs on top of the docker deamon. To use conmake you need a working docker environment.

Since there is actually no release of conmake you have to compile it from source. Required for this is a working go environment.

1. Get the repository with:

   $ go get github.com/cspengl/conmake
   

2. Go to $GOPATH/src/github.com/cspengl/conmake
3. Install it with:

   $ go install cmd/conmake.go
   

Getting started

To get started with conmake after you installed it you first have to set up a Conmakefile.yaml in your source code directory. Here is an example of building a 'Hello World' written in C.

---
version: v1
project: testapp

steps:
  build:
    workstation: building
    script:
      - gcc -o testapp testapp.c

workstations:
  building:
    base: gcc:latest
    preparation:
...

INFO: Get full example here

After that you can trigger one of the build steps with:

$ conmake do <buildstep>

Documentation

• CLI Reference
• Conmakefile Reference

Contributing

I am happy about any kind of feedback, feature or improvement ideas you have. If you want to contribute please follow the very common (gitflow) workflow:

1. Fork the project
2. Implement your ideas/changes
3. Create a pull request to the develop branch of this repository

Tools

• Generating docs
  For generating docs of the command line tool you can easily run the following command:

  $ go run tools/gen_cli_docs.go
  

Licensing

conmake is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. Check LICENSE for the full license text. Used modules might be licensed under a different license model.