profileBuilder

README

Profile Builder

Note: This tool is related to the Azure-SDK-for-Go, but not truly part of it. As such, the SemVers associated with this repository do not extend to the packages associated with profileBuilder.

Overview

Azure Profiles offer a means of virtualizing the API Versions of services that should be targeted by an application or SDK. This concept was introduced for Azure Stack, where the environment in which applications will be executed is less consistent than when targeting the public cloud. However, its usefulness as a means of easily snapping to versions of a service is broadly applicapable. Using profiles, it is easy to use a single version of models and operations throughout an application, or a means of locking to versions of services that have been tested and are guaranteed to work together.

Type aliases were introduced in Go 1.9, effectively allowing for multiple symbols to be mapped to a single type. The impact of this for our support of profiles is tremendous. It allows for seamless interoperability between packages using different profiles, but where those profiles still target the same API Version of a service. Without type aliases, we would have been forced to generate code in a way that required some ugly casts to be scattered throughout the consumer's code.

Installation

Note: These installation notes assume that you have Go 1.9 or higher, Dep, and Git installed.

The simplest version of installation is very easy but not stable, just run the following command:

go get -u github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/tools/profileBuilder

If that causes you trouble, run the following commands:

# bash
go get -d github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/tools/profileBuilder
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/tools/profileBuilder
dep ensure
go install

# PowerShell
go get -d github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/tools/profileBuilder
cd $env:GOPATH\src\github.com\Azure\azure-sdk-for-go\tools\profileBuilder
dep ensure
go install

Usage

Basics

Once installed, running profileBuilder should be straight-forward. Each sub-command is a different strategy for finding the packages to include in the profile. The most flexible and broadly applicable sub-command is list.

For the first example, we'll use the list sub-command without any commands. It will read from stdin, looking for line delimited Go package names.

$> profileBuilder list
github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/services/logic/mgmt/2016-06-01/logic
github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/services/redis/mgmt/2017-02-01/redis

Because we didn't specify a name for this profile, a random one will be generated. Assuming that it chooses the name YellowIceberg84, the files that would be produced would be in the structure:

$GOPATH
    /src
    |    /github.com
    |    |    /Azure
    |    |    |   /azure-sdk-for-go
    |    |    |    |    /profiles
    |    |    |    |    |    /YellowIceberg84
    |    |    |    |    |    |    /logic
    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    /mgmt
    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    /logic
    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    models.go
    |    |    |    |    |    |    /redis
    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    /mgmt
    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    /redis
    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    models.go
                            

Each of the files named models.go is composed of type definitions which will either duplicate or delegate all calls back to the original package's definition.

Clearly, typing each package name on demand, as profiles needs to be generated is error-prone and inconvenient. For that reason, using the piping operator to read the contents of a file into stdin is a much better idea. Using the file:

<myProfileDefinition.txt>
github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/services/logic/mgmt/2016-06-01/logic
github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/services/redis/mgmt/2017-02-01/redis

Will allow for the command:

$> cat myProfileDefinition.txt | profileBuilder list

This command then yields the same results as the first example.

Latest Command

The latest command reflects on the packages in the services directory of the Azure-SDK-for-Go, and picks the most up-to-date API Versions for inclusion in a profile. Optionally, it will include API Versions that are labeled as "preview".

Arguments

Help

Long Form	--help
Short Form	-h
Default	false
Sub-Commands	list, latest

The behavior of profileBuilder can be confured by passing in command-line arguments as flags. If you have any doubt or question about how a command operates, pass --help for profileBuilder to get a brief description of the command you're using, and all of the arguments it accepts.

Name

Long Form	--name
Short Form	-n
Default	<randomly generated>
Sub-Commands	list, latest

You can opt-to not have profileBuilder use a randomly generated name for your profile by passing this argument.

Output Location

Long Form	--output-location
Short Form	-n
Default	$GOPATH/src/github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/profiles
Sub-Commands	list, latest

The directory that profileBuilder should use to write the profile that is created.

Preview

Long Form	--preview
Short Form	-p
Default	false
Sub-Commands	latest

While the latest command is iterating over the known Azure-SDK-for-Go packages, it needs to decide whether or not to disclude versions it deems "preview" versions. The latest command relies of the suffix "-preview" at the end of the API Version name to make this determination.

Verbose

Long Form	--verbose
Short Form	-v
Default	false
Sub-Commands	list, latest

If you're looking for more information about the intermediate status of profileBuilder, this flag is for you. It may be most useful if you're not seeing the API Version you expected in your profile.

Go Generate

The go generate command cat take the place of make in some circumstances. The big benefit of using it is that it ships with go, and is more portable than make. To use it, one simply adds a comment into a Go source file that invokes an arbitrary command. When combined with the profileBuilder, this can be a powerful combination.