Big Builder

I personally don't want to be running CI/CD automation with full access to my Docker socket.

I made this image to hold all my typical build toolset, and also the gitea runner, so now I can just say runs-on: big-builder, and stuff works without docker.

This does mean I can't use github actions. That's okay with me: I don't want to be running node on my Raspberry Pi, either. I know how to use the Bourne shell, so I'm able to do everything I want that way.

How To Set This Up

1. Generate an example configuration, and edit it. Be sure to set tags here: I use something like big-builder,go,python3,hugo, and then I can say things like requires: hugo in my jobs.
2. Go get a runner registration token from your forgejo/gitea instance.
3. Run the interactive registation step.
4. Run the daemon.
5. Email me to let me know if these instructions worked for you!

mkdir /srv/big-builder
podman run --rm big-builder generate-config > /srv/big-builder/config.yaml # This generates a sample config
vim /srv/big-builder/config.yaml # Edit the config to your liking
podman run --rm -it -u 0:0 -v /srv/big-builder:/app big-builder register   # Tags here are overridden by config.yaml
podman run -d --restart=always -v /srv/big-builder:/app:ro big-builder daemon

Docker can be used instead of podman, with the same arguments.

More documentation is at gitea act runner.

Adding Other Packages

Make your own image. Like so:

FROM git.woozle.org/neale/big-builder
RUN apt-get -y install nethack

Even better, steal this one's Containerfile and add stuff to it. There's not much to it, and you shouldn't trust my image to be malware-free.

Caveats

Right now (October 2023), if anything tries to read from the tty, the runner just sits there, like POST BIOS patiently waiting for someone to press F1. This is a problem with the runner that they might fix one day. Just something to bear in mind: I spent a bit of time chasing this one down.

I may have additional bugs/wishlist items open at https://git.woozle.org/neale/big-builder/issues