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Hacking Guide

Overview

This guide contains instructions for those looking to hack on rkt. For more information on the rkt internals, see the devel documentation.

Building rkt

rkt should be able to be built on any modern Linux system. For the most part the codebase is self-contained (e.g. all dependencies are vendored), but assembly of the stage1 requires some other tools to be installed on the system.

Build-time requirements

  • Linux 3.8+
    • autoconf
    • automake
    • bc
    • cpio
    • gcc
    • glibc development and static pieces (on Fedora/RHEL/Centos: glibc-devel and glibc-static packages, on Debian/Ubuntu libc6-dev package)
    • gpg
    • make
    • openssl
    • patch
    • realpath
    • squashfs-tools
    • wget
  • Go 1.4+

Once the requirements have been met you can build rkt by running the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/coreos/rkt.git
cd rkt
./autogen.sh && ./configure && make

Build verbosity can be controlled with the V variable. Set V to 0 to have a silent build. Set V to either 1 or 2 to get short messages about what is being done (level 2 prints more of them). Set V to 3 to get raw output. Instead of a number, english words can be used. quiet or silent for level 0, info for level 1, all for level 2 and raw for level 3. Example:

make V=raw

Run-time requirements

rkt is statically linked and does not require any dynamic libraries to be installed. However, it requires the following kernel features:

  • CONFIG_CGROUPS
  • CONFIG_NAMESPACES
  • CONFIG_UTS_NS
  • CONFIG_IPC_NS
  • CONFIG_PID_NS
  • CONFIG_NET_NS

Additionally, the following features are nice to have:

  • CONFIG_OVERLAY_FS (to prepare the rootfs without tar)

With Docker

Alternatively, you can build rkt in a Docker container with the following command. Replace $SRC with the absolute path to your rkt source code:

# docker run -v $SRC:/opt/rkt -i -t golang:1.4 /bin/bash -c "apt-get update && apt-get install -y coreutils cpio squashfs-tools realpath autoconf file xz-utils patch bc && cd /opt/rkt && go get github.com/appc/spec/... && ./autogen.sh && ./configure && make"

Building systemd in stage1 from the sources

By default, rkt gets systemd from a CoreOS image to generate stage1. But it's also possible to build systemd from the sources. After running ./autogen.sh you can select the following options:

  • ./configure --with-stage1-flavors=coreos,src,host,kvm: choose which flavors to build (default: 'coreos,kvm') (kvm also uses systemd from CoreOS, the difference is in the execution engine, see next section)
  • ./configure --with-stage1-default-flavor=coreos|src|host|kvm: choose which built flavor should be the default (default: first from the flavors list)
  • ./configure --with-stage1-systemd-version=version: if 'src' flavor is built, choose the systemd branch or tag to build (default: 'v222')
  • ./configure --with-stage1-systemd-src=git-path: if 'src' flavor is built, systemd git repository's address (default: 'https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git')

Example:

./autogen.sh && ./configure --with-stage1-flavors=src --with-stage1-systemd-version=master --with-stage1-systemd-src=$HOME/src/systemd && make

Building stage1 with kvm as execution engine

The stage1 kvm image is based on CoreOS, but with additional components for running containers on top of a hypervisor.

To build, use --with-stage1-flavors=kvm flag in ./configure

This will generate stage1 with embedded kernel and kvmtool to start pod in virtual machine.

Additional build dependencies for the stage1 kvm follow. If building with docker, these must be added to the apt-get install command.

  • wget
  • xz-utils
  • patch
  • bc

Alternative stage1 paths

rkt is designed and intended to be modular, using a staged architecture.

rkt run determines the stage1 image it should use via its -stage1-image flag. By default, if this flag is unset at runtime, rkt will default to the configure-time settings. It usually means that rkt will look for a file called stage1-<default flavor>.aci that is in the same directory as the rkt binary itself.

However, a default value can be set for this parameter at build time by setting the option --with-stage1-default-location when invoking ./configure This is useful for those packaging rkt for distribution who will provide the stage1 in a fixed/known location.

The option should be set to the fully qualified path at which rkt can find the stage1 image - for example:

./autogen.sh && ./configure --with-stage1-default-location=/usr/lib/rkt/stage1.aci && make

rkt will then use this environment variable to set the default value for the stage1-image flag.

Managing Dependencies

rkt uses godep to manage third-party dependencies. The build process is crafted to make this transparent to most users (i.e. if you're just building rkt from source, or modifying any of the codebase without changing dependencies, you should have no need to interact with godep). But occasionally the need arises to either a) add a new dependency or b) update/remove an existing dependency. At this point, the ramblings below from an experienced Godep victim^Wenthusiast might prove of use...

Update godep

Step zero is generally to ensure you have the latest version of godep available in your PATH.

Having the right directory layout (i.e. GOPATH)

To work with godep, you'll need to have the repository (i.e. github.com/coreos/rkt) checked out in a valid GOPATH. If you use the standard Go workflow, with every package in its proper place in a workspace, this should be no problem. As an example, if one was obtaining the repository for the first time, one would do the following:

$ export GOPATH=/tmp/foo               # or any directory you please
$ go get -d github.com/coreos/rkt/...  # or 'git clone https://github.com/coreos/rkt $GOPATH/src/github.com/coreos/rkt'
$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/coreos/rkt

If, however, you instead prefer to manage your source code in directories like ~/src/rkt, there's a problem: godep doesn't like symbolic links (which is what the rkt build process uses by default to create a self-contained GOPATH). Hence, you'll need to work around this with bind mounts, with something like the following:

$ export GOPATH=/tmp/foo        # or any directory you please
$ mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/github.com/coreos/rkt
# mount --bind ~/src/rkt $GOPATH/src/github.com/coreos/rkt
$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/coreos/rkt

One benefit of this approach over the single-workspace workflow is that checking out different versions of dependencies in the GOPATH (as we are about to do) is guarnteed to not affect any other packages in the GOPATH. (Using gvm or other such tomfoolery to manage GOPATHs is an exercise left for the reader.)

Restoring the current state of dependencies

Now that we have a functional GOPATH, use godep to restore the full set of vendored dependencies to their correct versions. (What this command does is essentially just loop over the set of dependencies codified in Godeps/Godeps.json, using go get to retrieve and then git checkout (or equivalent) to set each to their correct revision.)

$ godep restore # might take a while if it's the first time...

At this stage, your path forks, depending on what exactly you want to do: add, update or remove a dependency. But in all three cases, the procedure finishes with the same save command.

Add a new dependency

In this case you'll first need to retrieve the dependency you're working with into GOPATH. As a simple example, assuming we're adding github.com/fizz/buzz:

$ go get -d github.com/fizz/buzz

Then add your new dependency into godep's purview by simply importing the standard package name in one of your sources:

$ vim $GOPATH/src/github.com/coreos/rkt/some/file.go
...
import "github.com/fizz/buzz"
...

Now, GOTO saving

Update an existing dependency

In this case, assuming we're updating github.com/foo/bar:

$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/foo/bar
$ git pull   # or 'go get -d -u github.com/foo/bar/...'
$ git checkout $DESIRED_REVISION
$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/coreos/rkt
$ godep update github.com/foo/bar/...

Now, GOTO saving

Removing an existing dependency

This is the simplest case of all: simply remove all references to a dependency from the source files.

Now, GOTO saving

Saving the set of dependencies

Finally, here we are, the magic command, the holy grail, the ultimate conclusion of all godep operations. Provided you have followed the preceding instructions, regardless of whether you are adding/removing/modifying dependencies, this command will cast the necessary spells to solve all of your dependency worries:

$ godep save -r ./...

Finishing up

At this point, you should be good to PR. As well as a simple sanity check that the code actually builds and tests pass, here are some things to look out for:

  • git status Godeps/ should show only a minimal and relevant change (i.e. only the dependencies you actually intended to touch).
  • git diff Godeps/ should be free of any changes to import paths within the vendored dependencies
  • git diff should show all third-party import paths prefixed with Godeps/_workspace

If something looks awry, restart, pray to your preferred deity, and try again.