BlueBuild

BlueBuild's command line program that builds Containerfiles and custom images based on your recipe.yml.

Requirements

The bluebuild tool takes advantage of newer build features. Specifically bind, cache, and tmpfs mounts on the RUN instructions. We support using the following tools and their versions:

• Docker - v23 and above
• Podman - v4 and above
• Buildah - v1.24 and above

Installation

Cargo

This is the best way to install as it gives you the opportunity to build for your specific environment.

cargo install --locked blue-build

Podman/Docker

This will install the binary on your system in /usr/local/bin. This is only a linux-gnu version.

podman run --pull always --rm ghcr.io/blue-build/cli:latest-installer | bash

docker run --pull always --rm ghcr.io/blue-build/cli:latest-installer | bash

Github Install Script

bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/blue-build/cli/main/install.sh)

Distrobox

We package a fedora-toolbox and alpine image with all the tools needed to run bluebuild. You can use distrobox to run the application without needing to install it on your machine.

# fedora-toolbox
distrobox create blue-build --image ghcr.io/blue-build/cli
# alpine
distrobox create blue-build --image ghcr.io/blue-build/cli:latest-alpine

By default, the bluebuild commands will not be visible outside of the distrobox itself. You will need to enter the distrobox, and either run the commands from inside the distrobox, or export the distrobox commands for use outside the distrobox.

Refer to the distrobox documentation for more information.

Running commands from within distrobox

[user@host]$ bluebuild help
ERROR
[user@host]$ distrobox enter blue-build
[user@blue-build]$ bluebuild help
A CLI tool built for creating Containerfile templates based on the Ublue Community Project
...

Exporting commands to run outside distrobox

[user@blue-build]$ distrobox-export --bin $(which bluebuild)
[user@blue-build]$ exit
[user@host]$ bluebuild help
A CLI tool built for creating Containerfile templates based on the Ublue Community Project
...

Nix Flake

You can install this CLI through the Nix flake on Flakehub

Non-nixos

You can install BlueBuild to your global package environment on non-nixos systems by running

# you can replace "*" with a specific tag
nix profile install https://flakehub.com/f/bluebuild/cli/*.tar.gz#bluebuild

NixOS

If you are using a dedicated flake to manage your dependencies, you can add BlueBuild as a flake input throught the fh cli (that can be installed through nixpkgs) and add bluebuild to it.

{pkgs,inputs,...}: {
    ...
    environment.SystemPackages = [
        inputs.bluebuild.packages.${pkgs.system}.bluebuild # change bluebuild with the fh added input name
    ];
    ...
}

If you are not using a dedicated nix flake, you can add the BlueBuild flake as a variable inside your /etc/nixos/*.nix configuration, though this requires you to run nixos-rebuild with the --impure variable, it is not advisable to do so.

{pkgs,...}:
let
    bluebuild = builtins.fetchTarball "https://flakehub.com/f/bluebuild/cli/*.tar.gz";
in {
    ...
    environment.SystemPackages = [
        bluebuild.packages.${pkgs.system}.bluebuild
    ];
    ...
}

You can also use nix develop .# in this repos directory to run a nix shell with development dependencies and some helful utilities for building BlueBuild!

How to use

Generating Containerfile

Once you have the CLI tool installed, you can run the following to pull in your recipe file to generate a Containerfile.

bluebuild generate -o <CONTAINERFILE> <RECIPE_FILE>

You can then use this with podman or buildah to build and publish your image. Further options can be viewed by running bluebuild template --help

Building

If you don't care about the details of the template, you can run the build command.

bluebuild build ./recipes/recipe.yaml

This will template out the file and build with buildah or podman.

Completions

The bluebuild completions command generates shell completions, printed to stdout. These completions can be stored for integration in your shell environment. For example, on a system with bash-completion installed:

# user completions
$ bluebuild completions bash > ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/bluebuild
# system-wide completions
$ bluebuild completions bash | sudo tee /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/bluebuild

Subsequent invocations of bluebuild will respond to <Tab> autocompletions:

$ bluebuild # press <Tab>
-v           -V           --help       template     bug-report
-q           --verbose    --version    upgrade      completions
-h           --quiet      build        rebase       help

Currently, bluebuild completions are available for bash, zsh, fish, powershell, and elvish shell environments.

Local Builds

Rebase

If you want to test your changes, you can do so by using the rebase command. This will create an image as a .tar.gz file, store it in /etc/bluebuild, an run rpm-ostree rebase on that newly built file.

sudo bluebuild rebase recipes/recipe.yml

You can initiate an immediate restart by adding the --reboot/-r option.

Upgrade

When you've rebased onto a local image archive, you can update your image for your recipe by running:

sudo bluebuild upgrade recipes/recipe.yml

The --reboot argument can be used with this command as well.

Switch

NOTE: This is an unstable feature and can only be used when installing from the main image or with the switch feature flag when compiling.

With the switch command, you can build and boot an image locally using an oci-archive tarball. The switch command can be run as a normal user and will only ask for sudo permissions when moving the archive into /etc/bluebuild.

bluebuild switch recipes/recipe.yml

You can initiate an immediate restart by adding the --reboot/-r option.

CI Builds

GitHub

You can use our GitHub Action by using the following .github/workflows/build.yaml:

name: bluebuild
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "00 17 * * *" # build at 17:00 UTC every day
                          # (20 minutes after last ublue images start building)
  push:
    paths-ignore: # don't rebuild if only documentation has changed
      - "**.md"
  pull_request:
  workflow_dispatch: # allow manually triggering builds
jobs:
  bluebuild:
    name: Build Custom Image
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: read
      packages: write
      id-token: write
    strategy:
      fail-fast: false # stop GH from cancelling all matrix builds if one fails
      matrix:
        recipe:
          # !! Add your recipes here
          - recipe.yml
    steps:
       # the build is fully handled by the reusable github action
      - name: Build Custom Image
        uses: blue-build/github-action@v1.0.0
        with:
          recipe: ${{ matrix.recipe }}
          cosign_private_key: ${{ secrets.SIGNING_SECRET }}
          registry_token: ${{ github.token }}
          pr_event_number: ${{ github.event.number }}

Gitlab

We also support GitLab CI! Fun fact, this project started out as a way to build these images in GitLab. You will want to make use of GitLab's Secure Files feature for using your cosign private key for signing. Here's an example of a .gitlab-ci.yml:

workflow:
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH && $CI_OPEN_MERGE_REQUESTS && $CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "push"
      when: never
    - if: "$CI_COMMIT_TAG"
    - if: $CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event"
    - if: "$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH && $CI_OPEN_MERGE_REQUESTS"
      when: never
    - if: "$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH"

stages:
  - build

build-image:
  stage: build
  image:
    name: ghcr.io/blue-build/cli:main
    entrypoint: [""]
  services:
    - docker:dind
  parallel:
    matrix:
      - RECIPE:
          # Add your recipe files here
          - recipe.yml
  variables:
    # Setup a secure connection with docker-in-docker service
    # https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/docker/using_docker_build.html
    DOCKER_HOST: tcp://docker:2376
    DOCKER_TLS_CERTDIR: /certs
    DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY: 1
    DOCKER_CERT_PATH: $DOCKER_TLS_CERTDIR/client
  before_script:
    # Pulls secure files into the build
    - curl --silent "https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/incubation-engineering/mobile-devops/download-secure-files/-/raw/main/installer" | bash
    - export COSIGN_PRIVATE_KEY=$(cat .secure_files/cosign.key)
  script:
    - sleep 5 # Wait a bit for the docker-in-docker service to start
    - bluebuild build --push ./recipes/$RECIPE

Future Features

• Stages for parallel building (useful for compiling programs for your image)
• Automatic download and management of image keys for seamless signed image rebasing
• Module command for easy 3rd party plugin management
• Create an init command to create a repo for you to start out
• Setup the project to allow installing with cargo-binstall