Re: Help adding package to gitlab runners

[Jag Raman]

> On Sep 13, 2021, at 1:38 AM, Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> On 13/09/2021 03.14, Jag Raman wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I'm wondering about the best way to install a dependency package on
>> GitLab runners.
>> 
>> I'm adding libvfio-user [1] as a submodule to QEMU. libvfio-user depends
>> on the availability of the "json-c" package. As such, we need to install this
>> package to build the library as part of QEMU.
>> I saw that we could add a "before_script" section to the jobs in
>> ".gitlab-ci.d/buildtest.yml" - this section could have commands to install 
>> the
>> "json-c" package before running the job. However, this option is specific to
>> a job.
>> I wonder if there is a way to do this for all jobs. I saw that
>> "scripts/ci/setup/build-environment.yml" has a list of packages needed to
>> build QEMU - this one seems Ubuntu-specific.
>> How long does it take for changes made to this file (build-environment.yml)
>> to propagate? Are all QEMU's GitLab runners Ubuntu-based?
> 
> No, this file (build-environment.yml) is only used to prepare the non-shared 
> custom runners (see .gitlab-ci.d/custom-runners.yml), which only run on the 
> staging branch of the qemu-project (or if you supply your own non-x86 
> runners).
> 
> I think in your case, you likely want to modify the shared runners instead. 
> For this, we're using containers that are prepared in the first two stages of 
> the CI pipelines. You can modify the container definitions in 
> tests/docker/dockerfiles/. Once you add your package there, it should get 
> used directly the next time you push a branch with the modification to gitlab.

Thank you for confirming, Thomas! :)

--
Jag

> 
> HTH,
>  Thomas