EdgeLord VS setup-buildx-action

I actually really like GitHub actions, I read the article and while I get some of the concerns, others I don't understand. In any case the author's situation doesn't apply to me, and I wanted to share something I really liked about GHA.

So, I recently figured out a way to host a remote browser on them by using an Ngrok tunnel. It's really cool to see BrowserBox running from inside a GitHub action container. I literally couldn't believe it actually worked when I first figured it out!

I was so excited. It started as just this tech prototype in my mind (could this be possible? Probably not but I Feel like it could be). And to see it actually achieved so cool! :)

I thought this was so cool, and such a useful way for people to either just get started with BrowserBox trying it out, or even run a quick little VPN-like/proxy browser from another region, that I wrote an action that integrates with issues to make the process as easy as possible for people.

Basically you can just clone or fork the repo: https://github.com/BrowserBox/BrowserBox and then open an issue and pick the template that is like "Make VPN". The login link will get published in the repo. The link is not private (unless you make your fork or template private) and there's a bit of setup with your ngrok API key (free is OK) but the issue conversation automatically guides you through all that.

I thought this was so cool (free server time, actually working app), that I created another version that uses MS Edge under the hood instead of Chrome in the original, just to show how easy it is: https://github.com/EdgeLord/EdgeLord

Just a niggle is that the other services we normally have (secure doc viewer, audio, remote devtools) do not work as ngrok only maps 1 port. I could use an ngrok config file I think to fix that but somehow, easy as that is, I have not gotten around to it! Another niggle is I noticed the auto-tab opening used in the GHA demo seems a little funky lately, and you may need to manually reload or resize them to un-wonkify it. Probably a little regression!

Anyway! :)

Good luck running this locally. There's no script code to speak of, just references to external "actions" and parameters (for example, https://github.com/docker/setup-buildx-action).

Some CI platforms are just a simple glue layer (Gitlab CI - which I prefer - is one of them), but in most cases Github CI is not. Maybe it adds to the author frustration?

Set up Docker Buildx: We will use the docker/setup-buildx-action action to set up Docker Buildx.

There’s an amazing docker/bake-action which makes it insanely easy to build all of your containers in the most optimal way. Since we’ve set the group “default” block in the docker-bake.hcl, config is very minimal. One step in your GitHub Action workflow file will build all of your images and will push all of your cache layers, tag all of your containers, and push all your final images. You’ll still have to do things like checkout the code and don’t forget that you’ll want to use the docker/setup-buildx-action since bake is a buildx feature. There’s one quick gotcha for the actual docker/bake-action. We don’t want to push PR builds and we don’t want to pollute the cache with PR builds.

To be clear, that article does NOT provide a solution for avoiding QEMU. I suggested it because it describes "the hard way" to get a single image multi-arch image. The github action crazy-max/ghaction-docker-buildx has been archived and replaced by docker/setup-qemu-action and docker/setup-buildx-action, which it seems like you were already using.

Third step is docker/setup-buildx-action configures buildx, which is a Docker CLI plugin that provides enhanced build capabilities.

We then use the docker/setup-buildx-action action to initialize an environment to build Docker images:

The setup-buildx-action configures Docker Buildx to create a builder instance for running the image build. The following step build-push-action, makes use of that instance to build your Docker image. The build-push-action supports all of the features provided by BuildKit out of the box. In our simple example, we are only specifying the Docker context, but more advanced features like SSH, secrets, and build args are supported.

# Get the repository's code - name: Checkout uses: actions/checkout@v2 # https://github.com/docker/setup-qemu-action - name: Set up QEMU uses: docker/setup-qemu-action@v1 # https://github.com/docker/setup-buildx-action - name: Set up Docker Buildx id: buildx uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v1

docker/setup-buildx-action@v1 - we use it to setup the docker builder