Autodiscovery
Autodiscovery, auto pilot mode on
Description
In the lifecycle of a software project, dependencies are everywhere. From that third application used to lint our code, the tool used to build our documentation website, or the container image used to distribute our application. As the project grows, the number of dependencies grows as long. Some dependencies are context-dependent, and others are expressed using a standard data structure.
Updatecli is a great tool to handle both situations. It can either manage tailored update scenarios by using a manifest provided by a maintainer or automatically identify available update scenarios.
The latter approach removes the need to write a manifest. This behavior is referred to as "autodiscovery". With autodiscovery enabled, updatecli generates manifests in-memory before applying them (instead of reading manifests and applying).
A use case: a repository with a collection of Dockerfile`s.
To keep the Dockerfiles' `FROM instructions up to date, writing one manifest file per Dockerfile isn’t practical. With autodiscovery enabled, Updatecli scans the repository for all Dockerfile and automatically tracks the FROM instruction to propose updates if needed.
This helps us maintain our Dockerfile images without having to write manifests.
Each autodiscovery scenario is handled by a crawler.
The goal of the crawler is to recursively parse all files in a directory, looking for the pattern and then try to generate as many updatecli manifests as possible.
Once all manifests have been generated, we run them as we would do with custom manifests, by running updatecli diff or updatecli apply.
This autodiscovery is enabled by default and should work out of the box just by running one of the following commands.
updatecli diffupdatecli showupdatecli apply
As with any opinionated way of working, a bit of adaptability is required. The next part of this document covers the different kinds of customization that can be used with autodiscovery.
Parameters
| Name | Type | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|---|
| actionid | string | actionid is a unique identifier used to retrieve the action configuration from the configuration file. | |
| crawlers | object | Crawlers defines a map of crawler configuration where the key represent the crawler type | |
| argocd | object | Spec defines the parameters which can be provided to the argocd builder. | |
| cargo | object | Spec defines the Cargo parameters. | |
| dockercompose | object | Spec is a struct fill from Updatecli manifest data and shouldn’t be modified at runtime unless For Fields that requires it, we can use the struct DockerCompose Spec defines the parameters which can be provided to the Helm builder. | |
| dockerfile | object | Spec is a struct fill from Updatecli manifest data and shouldn’t be modified at runtime unless For Fields that requires it, we can use the struct Dockerfile Spec defines the parameters which can be provided to the Dockerfile crawler. | |
| flux | object | Spec defines the parameters which can be provided to the Flux crawler. | |
| gitea/action | object | Spec defines the parameters which can be provided to the Github Action crawler. | |
| github/action | object | Spec defines the parameters which can be provided to the Github Action crawler. | |
| golang | object | Spec defines the parameters which can be provided to the Golang autodiscovery builder. | |
| helm | object | Spec defines the Helm parameters. | |
| helmfile | object | Spec defines the Helmfile parameters. | |
| ko | object | Spec defines the parameters which can be provided to the Kubernetes builder. | |
| kubernetes | object | Spec defines the parameters which can be provided to the Kubernetes builder. | |
| maven | object | Spec defines the parameters which can be provided to the Helm builder. | |
| nomad | object | Spec is a struct fill from Updatecli manifest data and shouldn’t be modified at runtime unless For Fields that requires it, we can use the struct DockerCompose Spec defines the parameters which can be provided to the Helm builder. | |
| npm | object | Spec defines the parameters which can be provided to the NPM builder. | |
| precommit | object | Spec defines the parameters uses to generate the precomit manifests | |
| prow | object | Spec defines the parameters which can be provided to the Kubernetes builder. | |
| rancher/fleet | object | Spec defines the parameters which can be provided to the fleet builder. | |
| terraform | object | Spec defines the Terraform parameters. | |
| updatecli | object | Spec defines the Updatecli parameters. | |
| groupby | string | groupby specifies how to group pipeline. The Accepted is one of “all”, “individual”. Default is “all” | |
| pullrequestid | string | !Deprecated in favor of actionid | |
| scmid | string | scmid is a unique identifier used to retrieve the scm configuration from the configuration file. |
Autodiscovery could benefit from some customization, such as providing SCM configuration or defining pull request information. Some parameters are crawler specific and others apply to all crawlers.
If a updatecli manifest specifies the root key "autodiscovery", such as in the following example, then on top of the default autodiscovery, it enables an additional autodiscovery feature. Here we clone the epinio/helm-chart repository in a temporary location and then look in that location for all Helm charts that specify dependencies and we try to update them.
Example
scms:
default:
kind: git
spec:
url: https://github.com/epinio/helm-charts.git
autodiscovery:
scmid: default
crawlers:
helm:
By default, autodiscovery looks for patterns from the local directory. We can also specify manifests from remote git repositories.
SCM
We assume that each crawler relies on the same SCM configuration and we can add more autodiscovery manifests to handle more repositories.
Pull Request
You can configure Updatecli to create a single pull request that includes all
autodiscovered changes by adding the actionid key to the autodiscovery
section of your manifest. This key should reference a pull request action
defined in your manifest’s actions section.
Here’s an example configuration for a GitHub pull request action:
Example
autodiscovery:
groupby: all
scmid: github
actionid: pr
actions:
pr:
kind: github/pullrequest
scmid: github
spec:
title: Pull request title
scms:
github:
kind: "github"
spec:
user: "user"
email: "updatecli@example.org"
owner: "my-org"
repository: "my-repo"
token: '{{ requiredEnv "GITHUB_TOKEN" }}'
username: '{{ requiredEnv "GITHUB_AUTHOR" }}'
One Pull request or many
The attribute autodiscovery.groupby can have the values:
- all (default) to create one pull request with all changes
- individual to create one pull request per change
Crawlers
Crawlers implement common update scenarios.
You can read more about the different crawlers by browsing the Plugins → Autodiscovery section of the documentation.
Type
The purpose of a crawler is to generate a manifest that updatecli can use. We identify two kinds of crawler, "standard", and "custom".
standard
A "standard" crawler is enabled by default but can be disabled on a case by case basis.
custom
A "custom" crawler is context specific, such as tailored to a company or a OSS project. By default it isn’t enabled.