[pve-devel] PVE development environment

[Stefan Reiter]

On 07/01/2021 16:17, Gilles Pietri wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Sorry if this doesn't belong here, point me in the right direction if
> there is one ;)
> 
> I read extensively what's there, and that is very helpful:
> https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Developer_Documentation
> I also read the thread here: I read also
> https://lists.proxmox.com/pipermail/pve-devel/2018-August/033448.html
> but that deals more with the repos than the actual dev env.
> 

That mail seems to a bit misguided in general... You do need these 
packages, but not the source, you just have to have them installed via 
APT. You only need the code for the package(s) you want to edit.

> Now I wonder, this all assumes you work directly on the test setup,
> patch and code from there, and I'm not a big fan of this, for many reasons…
> 
> I usually do write code on my own station, that can access various test
> setups that I can spawn, be it in virtualbox, test installs of proxmox
> or nested ones for actual qemu tests. My question is, how do you guys do
> it, if there are any consensual setups?
> 
> I wondered about different possibilities, tested some:
> - coding, versionning on a test environment: I don't like that: I need
> to maintain a test environment that includes the coding tools, and it
> will break, again and again, and not be in a reliable state, should I
> need to debug something.
> - compiling locally, having the debian and proxmox tooling, but that is
> not a happy solution, as I don't run Debian 10 or proxmox on my machine
> - using a set of hooks in git, mirroring stuff to a test instance, and
> compiling the packages there, rebooting as needed, that is easy enough,
> but I need to factor the dev environment
> - using a CI system to handle that on my branches/remotes, namely
> gitlab-ci with a runner on a pvetest instance, assetting the .debs,
> deploying them… that feels a bit overkill, but… well, I might like that
> more, but maybe we could have a lighter way there.
> 
> So, if I'm dumb and there's an obvious choice, just tell me ;)
> If not, I'd love to hear about how you guys do it, and if we could make
> suggestions for that!
> 

No obvious choice, everyone here also mostly has their own way of doing 
things.

The "usual" workflow is having a PVE installed locally with a desktop 
environment and using that to work and build packages. Our build system 
is designed to run on a PVE install, there's not really a way around 
that (that's debian packaging in general) - i.e. your second option.

On non-PVE workstations I personally like to set up a VM (or use a 
different machine via SSH) and either edit files directly in there or 
work on the host and have the folder mounted in via virtiofs, sshfs or 
what have you, so I can build inside the VM.

If you need a clean test environment separate from that: Second VM, copy 
the deb files generated by 'make deb' over and test there. Easily 
scriptable as well :)

Hope that helped somewhat,

~ Stefan

> Cheers,
> 
> Gilou
>