djinn VS docker-flask-example

Djinn CI is a newly launched CI platform, with the following features:

I've built a CI platform [1] that does support running your CI builds without the server using an offline runner. I wrote about it here before: https://blog.djinn-ci.com/showcase/2022/08/06/running-your-c...

[1] - https://about.djinn-ci.com/

Author of Djinn CI here. This is a CI platform that I developed, it is open source but there is also a hosted offering https://about.djinn-ci.com. Some of the features are detailed below:

* Fully virtualized Linux VMs

* GitHub/GitLab integration

* Variable masking

* Configurable artifact cleanup limits

* Multi-repository builds

* Repeatable builds with cron jobs

* Custom QCOW2 images for builds

I've written some posts demonstrating the features of the platform which I have posted here before:

* https://blog.djinn-ci.com/showcase/2022/08/06/running-your-c...

* https://blog.djinn-ci.com/showcase/2022/08/16/using-multiple...

For further reading there is also the documentation sub-site at https://docs.djinn-ci.com/.

If you have any questions don't hesitate to reach out.

Good article. Firecracker is something that has definitely piqued my interest when it comes to quickly spinning up a throwaway environment to use for either development or CI. I run a CI platform [1], which currently uses QEMU for the build environments (Docker is also supported but currently disabled on the hosted offering), startup times are ok, but having a boot time of 1-2s is definitely highly appealing. I will have to investigate Firecracker further to see if I could incorporate this into what I'm doing.

Julia Evans has also written about Firecracker in the past too [2][3].

[1] - https://about.djinn-ci.com

[2] - https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/01/23/firecracker--start-a-vm-in-l...

[3] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883253

At this point when it came to my hobbyist development, I had moved past PHP and started learning Go, and was looking to do some serious development with this for a CI platform I had an idea for. By now, I had a firmer grasp of the software stack I wanted to work with, a better understanding of how everything pieced together. And so I went about developing that CI platform, that would later become Djinn CI. I uninstalled VirtualBox and Vagrant and fully committed to using QEMU, booting up the local machine was as simple as hitting CTRL + R in my terminal, searching for qemu and hitting enter, an elegant solution I know.

I use mcmathja/curlyq and found it pretty reliable. This is the queue I use for Djinn CI an open source CI platform I developed.

Djinn CI makes working with multiple repositoriesin a build simple via the sourcesparameter in the build manifest. This allows you to specify multiple Git respositories to clone into your build environment. Each source would be a URL that could be cloned via git clone. With most CI platforms, a build's manifest is typically tied to the source code repository itself. With Djinn CI, whilst you can have a build manifest in a source code repository, the CI server itself doesn't really have an understanding of that repository. Instead, it simply looks at the sources in the manifest that is specified, and clones each of them into the build environment.

Perhaps the one feature that sets Djinn CI out from other CI platforms is the fact that is has an offline runner. The offline runner allows for CI builds to be run without having to send them to the server. There are some limitations around this, of course, but it provides a useful mechanism for sanity checking build manifests, testing custom images, and for building software without the need for a CI server.

You mention CI being done in a distributed fashion. Could you elaborate on what you mean by this?

I'm asking as I'm someone who has developed a CI platform [1], and one of its features is the offline runner [2]. The offline runner allows you to run your CI builds on your own computer, and does not communicate with the CI server whatsoever. Is this what you had in mind?

[1] https://about.djinn-ci.com

[2] https://docs.djinn-ci.com/user/offline-runner/

Djinn CI is a newly launched CI platform, with the following features:

I've been maintaining my Build a SAAS App with Flask video course[0] for 8 years. It has gone from pre-1.0 to 2.3 and has been recorded twice with tons of incremental updates added over the years to keep things current.

In my opinion tutorial creators should pin their versions so that anyone taking the course or going through the tutorial will have a working version that matches the video or written material.

I'm all for keeping things up to date and do update things every few months but rolling updates don't tend to work well for tutorials because sometimes a minor version requires a code change or covering new concepts. As a tutorial consumer it's frustrating when the content doesn't match the source code unless it's nothing but a version bump.

I've held off upgrading Flask to 3.0 and Python 3.12 due to these open issues with 3rd party dependencies https://github.com/nickjj/docker-flask-example/issues/17.

[0]: https://buildasaasappwithflask.com/

I usually end up with project specific "run" scripts which are just shell scripts so I can do things like `./run shell` to drop into the shell of a container, or `./run rails db:migrate` to run a command in a container.

Here's a few project specific examples. They all have similar run scripts:

    - https://github.com/nickjj/docker-flask-example

There's a lot of "tool" selections in that repo.

If anyone is looking for ready to go web app examples aimed at both development and production, I maintain:

    - https://github.com/nickjj/docker-flask-example

Personally I maintain https://github.com/nickjj/docker-flask-example. There's also https://github.com/nickjj/build-a-saas-app-with-flask if you want more opinions.

This is what I do except I use a shell script instead of a Makefile.

A working example of this is at: https://github.com/nickjj/docker-flask-example/blob/912388f3...

Those ./run ci:XXX commands are in: https://github.com/nickjj/docker-flask-example/blob/912388f3...

I like it because if CI ever happens to be down I can still run that shell script locally.

> I've encountered a code written in the 12factor style of using environment variables for configuration, and in that particular case there was no validation nor documentation of the configuration options. Is this typical?

I don't know about typical, it comes down to how your team values the code they write.

You can have a .env.example file commit to version control which explains every option in as much or as little detail as you'd like. For my own personal projects, I tend to document this file like this https://github.com/nickjj/docker-flask-example/blob/main/.en....

I did this for a while but make isn't well suited for this use case. What I end up doing is have a shell script with a bunch of functions in it. Functions automatically becomes a callable a command (with a way to make private functions if you want) with pretty much no boiler plate.

The benefit of this is it's just shell scripting so you can use shell features like $@ to pass args to another command or easily source and deal with env vars.

I've written about this process at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/replacing-make-with-a-shell-s... and an example file is here https://github.com/nickjj/docker-flask-example/blob/main/run.

There's: https://github.com/nickjj/docker-flask-example