Docker execution instructions

:dizzy: New! For a simpler way to setup a macOS machine, please check out the setupmymac script, which automates configuring and keeping updated a local whimsy instance with Docker.

This is experimental at this point.

Do NOT proceed unless you are comfortable with the notion of containers, images, Dockerfiles, Volumes, Port Forwarding, and likely Docker Compose.

If, however, this describes you, it is hoped that these steps will enable you to run a full Whimsy system inside a container on your development machine. You can edit files inside your favorite IDE on your host machine.

Prerequisites

You will need Docker, git, and subversion. And approximately 3 GB of disk space

Direct link to docker for macOS (this avoids the need to login to Docker Hub), or install via:

$ brew cask install docker
$ open /Applications/Docker.app # this starts Docker

A development class machine and a high speed internet connection would be in order. Some things appear to perform well, other things perform noticeably slower than a native (non-container) installation of whimsy.

You will also need to ensure the subversion file system format used by the host machine matches the format used by the container. Currently macOS Catalina/Xcode provides svn 1.10.4 and the Dockerfile downloads the latest 1.10 version (currently 1.10.6).

Finally, a note on password stores. Inside ~/.subversion/config, you will see a list of available stores, which currently is gnome-keyring, kwallet, gpg-agent, keychain, and windows-cryptoapi. The only ones that are available to an Ubuntu container are ones marked as for “Unix-like systems”. If you chose another (e.g., keychain) then you will either need to do all of your svn checkouts and updates from the host or you will be prompted for your password if you attempt to do these operations from within the container.

Installation instructions

  • Create an empty directory. Note: while you can use an existing clone of Whimsy (and in particular, you may be able to use the /srv directories defined by the macOS instructions), be aware of the following:
    • Files in the parent directory of the Whimsy clone may be created, overwritten, or deleted by this process.
    • The svn and git sub-directories cannot be links to another part of host file system outside of your home directory as those files will not be visible to the container.
  • cd into that directory
  • git clone git@github.com:apache/whimsy.git OR
  • git clone https://github.com/apache/whimsy.git (whichever works best for you)
  • cp whimsy/config/whimsy.template .whimsy
  • edit the .whimsy file as per its comments
  • Create the file .bash_aliases if required - this will be picked up by the root user There is a sample template whimsy/config/bash_aliases.template to get you started
  • mkdir apache2_logs if required - this will be used for the server logs (makes it easier to review them)
  • cd whimsy
  • Start Docker if necessary: $ open /Applications/Docker.app
  • rake docker:update # this runs docker:build and updates any Gems
  • If you are using a local copy of SVN, you will need to start the server and run rake svn:update from a shell
  • Otherwise you can run rake svn:update externally
  • rake docker:up # This prompts for LDAP Bind password
  • visit http://localhost:1999/ in your favorite browser

To get a shell on the container, open a terminal console in the work directory and run rake docker:exec. The container must already be running.

Note: the initial run of the rake docker:update step will take a long time as it will need to download and install all of the Ubuntu packages, build and install Passenger, as well as update all the Ruby Gems. The good news is that this can be entirely unattended as there will be no prompts required during this process. The command does not need to be repeated each time you want to start the container, but should be repeated from time to time to fetch updated sources.

If you wish to create the Ubuntu image separately, run rake docker:build (this is invoked as part of docker:update) This should be re-run if you update any of the resources used for the build, e.g. files in docker-config and the Dockerfile

The rake svn:update step updates the SVN repos used by Whimsy. The container does not automatically update these (unlike the live installation), so the step should be performed as necessary before starting the container to ensure the data is sufficiently up-to-date. This requires karma to fetch some of the files. If using a local copy of the SVN repos, rake svn:update must be run from the container. It does not need any special karma.

This should be enough to get most of Whimsy working. It is not known yet what functions work and what functions do not.

Installation layout

The docker-compose.yml has the following mounts:

container path host path /srv directory chosen in step 1

You can edit the files in these directories using your host tools. If any of the configuration files under .subversion etc contain absolute references to files (such as CA certificates), these will need to be fixed somehow (e.g. create links on the container)

Note on Repositories

If you don't want to check out all of the repositories, omit the rake docker:update svn:update, and only checkout/clone the repositories that you need. You can find the complete list in repository.yml.

If you haven't checked out a repository that you need to run a specific tool, you will generally see an exception like the following in your logs:

Unable to find svn checkout for https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/foundation/board (foundation_board) (Exception)

To correct this, do the following:

cd /srv/svn
svn co https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/foundation/board foundation_board

Adjust as necessary if using local (private) SVN repos

There is no support for using a whimsysvn proxy. If a developer needs such access, they should use a local SVN repository.

Using a local SVN repository

Create a directory called REPO (must agree with docker-config/whimsy.conf) under the whimsy parent directory (i.e. alonside the gems/ directory) Set up 3 local SVN repositories under the REPO directory using svnadmin create with the names: asf, private, infra Under each of these, create the directories and files you need.

Add the following entry to the .whimsy file: :svn_base: http://localhost/repos/ The repositories can then be found at the following locations in Docker:

Note: these will be checked out under /srv/svn in Docker.

Testing email

The following command can be used to run a dummy smtp server on port 1025: python3 -u -m smtpd -n -c DebuggingServer localhost:1025

It can be tested with: tools/testmail.rb <userid>

Known not to work (ToDos)

  • Board agenda web socket (used to communicate updates from the server to browsers)
  • Automatic restarting of passenger based tools when source code changes are made. Just restart the server instead: apachectl restart.

Uninstallation procedures

  • Exit out of any running containers
  • Remove the entire directory structure created as step 1 of the installation instructions.
  • docker image rm whimsy-web
  • docker image prune -f
  • docker container prune -f