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Overview

The continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD) system is dependent on the following:

GNU Guix: used to define the machine (VM, container, etc) within which the CI/CD system will run
Guix Forge: does the main ochestration that enables the CI/CD system to function
Laminar: Runs the CI jobs

In the sections that follow, we shall dive deeper into how the CI/CD system is put together

CI/CD Flow

Developer writes some code and pushes it to the main branch in the GeneNetwork(2/3) repositories
A webhook triggers the CI system
The CI system runs the unit tests, linting and type checks mostly concurrently
If ALL the unit tests pass, the application is redeployed

Guix Forge and G-Expressions

The CI/CD used for GeneNetwork makes heavy use of Guix G-Expressions (also known as gexps) written for guix-forge.

The CI system begins by defining a data structure to hold the development server's configuration

(define-record-type* <development-server-configuration>
  development-server-configuration make-development-server-configuration
  development-server-configuration?
  (name development-server-configuration-name)
  (git-repository development-server-configuration-git-repository)
  (git-branch development-server-configuration-git-branch)
  (executable-path development-server-configuration-executable-path)
  (runner development-server-configuration-runner)
  (port development-server-configuration-port
        (default 8080)))

The define-record-type macro is defined in the (guix records) module.

The server configuration has the following values:

name: The name of the server configuration
git-repository: The git repository relating to the server configuration
git-branch: The branch to run the CI against
executable-path: something to do with laminar?
runner: A gexp that runs the service under …
port: The port to run the service under CI/CD on

TODO Identify what 'executable-path' above is about genenetwork CI CD
TODO Find out under what conditions the gexp runs genenetwork CI CD

TODO Figure out how to organise these notes genenetwork CI CD

The system uses webhook to trigger the builds on each commit
There is some use of development-server-configuration objects

Overview

CI/CD Flow

Guix Forge and G-Expressions

TODO Figure out how to organise these notes genenetwork CI CD

TODO Maybe do a deep dive into at least one of the service definitions, explaining what each "thing" is and how it works genenetwork CI CD