Building for Windows

To perform Windows builds, Koji clones and starts a Windows VM, checks out sources, and build the sources inside the VM. The VM should have compile tools already pre-installed. Koji stores the build results in the hub.

Similar to RPM builds, Koji’s Windows builds have a unique name, version, and release field. Windows builds use Koji build targets, and you can tag builds into Koji tags like any other build. When you build a Windows component, you can reference other components, and Koji will download those into the build environment to satisfy build-time dependencies.

Initiating a build

Initiate Windows builds with the win-build subcommand:

$ koji win-build <target> <scm-url> <vm-name>

• target works like build targets for other types of builds. The build tag for the target determines where Koji will pull build dependencies from, and the destination tag for the target determines where Koji will tag the completed build.

• scm-url follows the same syntax used for other Koji builds:

  scheme://[user@]host/path/to/repo?path/to/module#revision_or_tag_identifier
  

  Koji requires a “Windows spec file” (see below). This spec file can either be included in the top directory of the sources or specified separately with the --winspec option.

  --winspec which allows you to specify a second remote repository that contains the windows spec file using the same SCM URL syntax. That way you are not forced to keep the spec in with the rest of your sources if you don’t want to.

  There is also a --patches option which is just like --winspec, except meant for a repository of separate patches, which will be applied to the sources before the build is launched. --winspec and --patches may reference the same repo.

• vm-name is the name of the VM image to use for the build. This name must be one of the known images available on the builders.

Note

Koji hub’s vm policy governs access for performing Windows builds. Koji’s default policy requires the user to have the win-admin permission. Different Koji instances may have different policies. If the policy denies you access, you will see an ActionNotAllowed error. In that case, you will need to file a request with your Koji administators.

The Windows “Spec-File”

This file controls the build process and is modeled very loosely on RPM’s spec files. The Windows spec file is in .ini format.

It’s probably easiest to start by looking at this example spec file.

[naming]

All values in the [naming] section must be defined. Koji uses the name, version, and release to determine the NVR of the build. As with all NVRs in Koji, this must be a unique value.

[building]

The [building] section defines preconditions that must be satisfied before the build will be launched, and the commands used to perform the build. platform indicates to VM type the build is running in, and should be in the format of osname-arch.

The preinstalled value under [building] lists the files and directories that must be present for the build to run. Koji administrators should pre-install these tools into the VM parent image. If Koji finds any of the the files or directories listed here are missing when the build runs, it will fail immediately. Files and directories may be listed in Windows format (C:\Program Files\...), full Cygwin paths (/bin/...), or as command names (tar, unzip, etc). If they are listed as command names, Koji will check the Cygwin PATH for the command.

The buildrequires value under [building] lists other packages that the build depends on. As with RPM BuildRequires, the Windows buildrequires entries should be package names only (no version information). Koji will look up the latest build of that package in the target’s build tag and download files from that build into the VM.

Each package listed in buildrequires can have a colon-delimited list of options associated with it, which determine which files from the build will be downloaded.

• By default, all Windows files associated with the dependent build will be downloaded (this is the same as specifying type=win). In this case, comma-separated lists of platforms= and flags can also be specified, in which case the files downloaded into the VM will be limited to those associated with one or more of the platform and flag values (more about this in the [files] section below.)

• If type=rpm is specified, then all rpms associated with the dependent build will be downloaded. In this case a comma-separated list of arches= may be specified, and only rpms matching one of those arches will be downloaded.

• If type=maven is specified, then comma-separated lists of group_ids=, artifact_ids=, and/or versions= may be specified, and only Maven artifacts matching at least one value in each list will be downloaded.

• In all cases, a patterns= option may be specified, which is a comma-separated list of globs to match against the filenames. Only files matching at least one of the patterns will be downloaded.

After downloading the buildrequires files, Koji places them in a directory based on their type sets variables pointing to their locations. The variable names are based on the dependency name, with some conversions:

• A leading number is converted to an underscore, and any character that is not a letter, number, or underscore is converted to an underscore.

• If type= is specified, then <type>_dir is appended to complete the variable name. Otherwise, just _dir is appended.

In the example spec file:

• The directory containing the boost-win files would be $boost_win_dir.

• The directory containing the .src.rpm from the qpid-cpp-mrg build would be $qpid_cpp_mrg_rpm_dir. Note the extra _rpm there, because it specified type=rpm.

Koji also sets _files variables for each dependency. Each _files variable contains a newline-delimited list of all files downloaded for each dependency. In the example, Koji would define $boost_win_files and $qpid_cpp_mrg_rpm_files variables.

Koji downloads the files to the VM unmodified. It is up to the build process to extract them if necessary, and move/copy them to whatever location is required by the current build.

The provides value under [building] is optional, and can be used to indicate what the build is producing. It is freeform, but a structure like <name>-<version> is encouraged.

The shell value under [building] indicates how the build script should be run. Valid values are bash, which will cause the script to be run in bash, and cmd.exe, which will cause the script to be run in Windows cmd.exe. cmd is also an alias for cmd.exe. bash is the default if no shell value is present.

The execute value under [building] is required, and this is what drives the build process. This value is multiline, and each line is treated as a separate command to be execute in the shell specified above. In addition to the variables defined for the buildrequires, the following variables will be available when the script is executed:

• name: name from the [naming] section

• version: version from the [naming] section

• release: release from the [naming] section

• source_dir: the directory the sources were checked out into

• spec_dir: the directory the .ini was checked out into. If there was no separate --winspec option passed on the command-line, this will be the same as source_dir.

• patches_dir: the directory the patches were checked out into. If there was no --patches option passed on the command-line, this will be undefined.

If using bash, the build script will be executed with -x and -e, which will cause all commands to be echoed, and will cause the script to fail if any commands have a non-zero exit status. There is no equivalent fail-fast option for Windows cmd.exe. If executing the script using cmd.exe, it is recommend that you frequently check the return value of commands with this:

if %ERRORLEVEL% neq 0 exit %ERRORLEVEL%

The script will start in the root directory of the sources that were checked out ($source_dir). Extra scripts or supplementary files required by the build may be checked in along with the .ini file, and will be available under $spec_dir (assuming a separate --winspec option was used).

The postbuild value is optional, and specifies a list of files and directories (relative to $source_dir) that must be present for the build to be considered successful. If any of them are missing, the build will fail. Use this to verify that all expected output was generated correctly, in the case that some commands may have failed silently.

[files]

The [files] section describes what output Koji should collect after the build completes. The logfiles value is optional, but it should be set to whatever build logs are produced from the build. The syntax for the output variable is a colon-separated value:

output = qpid-cpp-x86-$version.zip:i386:chk,fre

• The first token (qpid-cpp-x86-$version.zip) is the path to the file you want collected as part of your build output. This path is rooted at the checkout from the SCM ($source_dir). The file path relative to $source_dir is retained when output is uploaded to Koji and when it is downloaded as a buildrequires by future builds. If you don’t want a long, confusing file path, it may be desirable to copy the build output to $source_dir at the end of your build script. File globs are not allowed, but the $name, $version, and $release variables will be expanded in the file paths and names, using the values from the [naming] section.

• The second token is a comma-separated list of platforms (which we haven’t really standardized on yet, but i386 and x86_64 are logical choices).

• The last is a comma-separated list of build flags. These fields are purely informational, they do not influence future builds at this time, but they do make for good housekeeping in the future. Common flags are chk (indicating a debug build) and fre (indicating an optimized build). If an output file contains both kinds of builds, both may be specified.

The logs value indicates extra log files generated during the build that should be tracked. The contents of these log files will be streamed to the hub during the build and may be watched in realtime using the “Watch logs” feature of the web interface, or the koji watch-logs CLI command. Koji will also include these log when storing the build long-term in the hub.

Administration

Windows Build Hosts

By default, all winbuild tasks go to the vm channel. The hosts in this channel require special setup.

• They run the kojivmd daemon instead of the regular kojid daemon

• VM images for builds must be stored in the local image directory

Managing VM Images

The directory where kojivmd looks for vm images can be controlled by setting imagedir in /etc/kojivmd/kojivmd.conf. The default value is /var/lib/libvirt/images.

These images must be qcow2 images named with a .qcow2 extension. The basename of the image file is the same name that users refer to in the vm-name parameter to the win-build command.