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scicat-ci

CI related information to deploy SciCat at PSI.

For a simpler configuration for running and developing the SciCat core components, see the SciCat Live project.

Local environment

To spin up the container(s) of interest, follow the documentation in the README in the dev folder.

Deployment behaviour

The CI is responsible for deploying the SciCat components in the k8s clusters (one for development, another for qa and production), based on some rules.

The whole pipeline relies on the existence of three deployment environments: development (where changes are developed), qa (beta testing environment) and production (stable environment). The components are deployed on one of two clusters depending on the environment. The development environment is deployed on the development cluster, while the qa and production environment are deployed on the qaprod cluster and are installed under the scicat-{env} namespace on the corresponding cluster. For the three GitHub CI triggers, pull_request to main, push to main and release, the CI extracts the environment based on the trigger (follows), builds, tags and pushes the docker image and deploys the helm chart to the corresponding k8s cluster, having applied the configuration specific to the environment.

Environment K8 Cluster Namespace
development development scicat-development
qa qaprod scicat-qa
production qaprod scicat-production

The configuration files are in the helm/configs folder and are organised in folders with the same name of the component (convention to be maintained). For each component, the files in helm/configs/{component} are shared by all the environments, while the ones specific to one environment are in helm/configs/{component}/{environment}. For example, the backend configuration files are in the helm/configs/backend folder, and the development specific files are in helm/configs/backend/development

There is no need to explicitly specify the environment, nor the location of the files at CI time, as its value is extracted depending on the GitHub CI trigger.

Some conventions are to be maintained:

  • the name of the component in the GitHub submodule has to match the name of the config folder in the helm/configs directory. Also, this is the name that will be assigned to the helm release on the cluster.
  • folders inside helm/configs/{component}, can only be named development, qa or production as they need to have the same names as the environments since the helm deployment uses the environment name to look for environment-specific folders.

Changes that trigger the pipeline

The whole repo structure relies on the concept of git submodules. Every component is a pointer to the repository in the SciCatProject organisation and as part of the CI the GitHub actions inspect for changes in submodules. The other change that triggers the pipeline is a change in the configuration files and changing the configuration of one of the components triggers the deployment of that component only. All other changes do not trigger a new deployment.

The two common scenarios for which we want a new deployment of a component are:

  • a change in the configuration of the component
  • a change in the code base of the component (i.e. working on the submodule)

Workflow when changing the configuration of a component

  1. open a new branch in the scicat-ci repo
  2. make the change in the file of need, which is in helm/configs/{component}/{environment}
  3. commit and push the change to the remote
  4. open a PR to main. At this point, the pipeline deploying on development starts.
  5. when ready, merge the PR into main. At this point, the pipeline deploying on qa starts.
  6. when ready, create a new release. At this point, the pipeline deploying on production starts.

Example session for test on development

git clone [email protected]:paulscherrerinstitute/scicat-ci.git
git checkout -b configs/testMetadataColumns
cd scicat-ci/helm/configs/frontend/development/
# do your changes and commits
git add helm/configs/frontend/development/environment.ts
git commit -m "New frontend configuration for development to test metadata columns"
git push origin configs/testMetadataColumns 
# follow the PR link given and push the PR on the github webpage

Workflow when working on a submodule

  1. open a new branch in the scicat-ci repo
  2. cd into the component submodule (e.g. cd backend)
  3. open a new branch in the submodule repo
  4. make the changes in the submodule
  5. commit and push the changes to the submodule remote (e.g. git push https://github.com/SciCatProject/backend.git)
  6. cd .. back to the scicat-ci repo
  7. commit the change in the submodule reference (e.g. git commit backend) and push to the scicat-ci remote (git push [email protected]:paulscherrerinstitute/scicat-ci.git)
  8. open a PR to main. At this point, the pipeline deploying on development starts.
  9. when ready, merge the PR into main. At this point, the pipeline deploying on qa starts.
  10. when ready, create a new release. At this point, the pipeline deploying on production starts.

Development pipeline

When opening a merge request to the main branch, the CI inspects which files were changed. If the configuration changed was a development one, namely if the file changed is in helm/configs/{component}/development or there is a change in the component submodule, then the component is deployed on the development cluster, otherwise, no deployment on development takes place.

QA pipeline

Once the merge request CI is successful, the user can merge on the main branch. If the configuration changed was a qa one, namely if the file changed is in helm/configs/{component}/qa or there is a change in the component submodule, then the component is deployed on the qaprod cluster, using the scicat-qa namespace, otherwise, no deployment on qa takes place.

Production pipeline

The deployment on production is managed by using a naming convention on tags names on release. Whenever the user creates a new release, the CI checks the prefix of the tag and, independently of the changes, deploys the corresponding component on production, i.e. on the qaprod cluster, using the scicat-production namespace.

Below are the existing components with their prefix, in the format component: prefix:

  • frontend: fe
  • backend: be
  • search-api: sa
  • pan-ontologies-api: po
  • oaipmh: oa
  • landing-page-server: lp

Deploy.sh

The deploy.sh script should ease the deployment in the development and qa environment, by making use of CI triggers.

The deployment to development is triggered when a pull request to main is opened or when there is a workflow dispatch event. The script makes use of the github APIs to trigger a workflow dispatch event and start a deployment on development. On qa the trigger is a push to main and, so, the script does a push on main when needing to deploy on qa.

How to use

  1. clone the repo and its submodules:
git clone [email protected]:paulscherrerinstitute/scicat-ci.git
git submodule update --recursive --init
  1. Print out the script options:
./deploy.sh -h
>Input options:
>   -e           deployment environment name. Default to development
>   -w           CI workflow file name. To be specified when environment=development
>   -s           submodule name. Default to scicat
>   -c           CI repo local path. Default to .
>   -b           CI Branch name. Default to the current branch name of the submodule
>   -o           CI origin alias. Default to origin
>   -m           CI Main branch name. Default to main
>   -t           Github token

Deploy on dev

To deploy on development the workflow to run and the github token must be set, respectively with the -w and -t flags or exporting the env variables. The other options are optional.

./deploy.sh -t <YOUR_GITHUB_TOKEN> -w scicat-be.yml

This will trigger the deployment of the scicat be using the commit from your submodule (NOTE that this commit must be in the scicat be).

To obtain a suitable token, please follow the github wiki.

Deploy on qa

To deploy on qa the environment option must be set, with the -e flag, or exporting the env variable.

./deploy.sh -e qa

As before, the version which is deployed on qa is the one of the commit from your submodule (NOTE that this commit must be in the scicat be).

⚠️ IMPORTANT

The deploy.sh script belongs to the scicat-ci repo, so it needs to be run from this folder. This means that, when developing on scicat, one still needs to run the following steps:

  1. from scicat-ci cd e.g. into backend:
cd backend
  1. commit and push the change to the scicat be repo
  2. cd back to scicat-ci:
cd ..
  1. run deploy.sh
./deploy.sh

This can be eased by creating an alias that sets the -c flag, e.g.:

alias deploy_scicat_be=". <YOUR_PATH_TO_SCICATCI>/deploy.sh -c <YOUR_PATH_TO_SCICATCI>"

or exporting the cipath env variable and expanding the PATH:

export cipath=<YOUR_PATH_TO_SCICATCI>
PATH=$PATH:<YOUR_PATH_TO_SCICATCI>

In this way, it is possible to run the deploy.sh script directly from the e.g. scicat be folder, thus not needing (3).