How to Write a Cloud Native Buildpack Using Packit

If the entire Cloud Native Buildpack experience is new to you, you may want to stop and take some time to read the about authoring a a Cloud Native Buildpack (CNB). Packit is a Go library that is an abstraction that conforms to the CNB specification that takes a minimal approach in terms of the features that are implemented giving a lot of fine control to the buildpack author. But, that isn't what this tutorial is about, this tutorial's goal is to take you from nothing to a buildpack that puts a dependency on the filesystem as fast as possible, so with that let's get into it.

Packit

For the full documentation of the Packit library, you can peruse the godocs linked above, but in the interest of saving you time let's talk about the three artifacts that will need to be present in our final built buildpack. In the end we will need a buildpack.toml file, a bin/detect binary, and a bin/build binary for this buildpack to be CNB compliant so with that let's get started.

Prerequisites

You will need the following tools installed on your machine to aid you in building and testing your buildpack.

Let's Get Started

For demonstration purposes we are going to build a buildpack that installs a the nodejs engine, which is based off the Paketo node-engine-cnb.

A sample repository containing all of the code is here. To start a brand new Go project all you need to do is create a new directory to contain you project run the following command:

go mod init <path/to/project or github.com/<some-org or some-user>/<some-repo>>

`buildpack.toml`

api = "0.2"

[buildpack]
  id = "com.example.node-engine"
  name = "Node Engine Buildpack"
  version = "0.0.1"

[[stacks]]
  id = "org.cloudfoundry.stacks.cflinuxfs3"

Let's talk about some of the fields that are in buildpack.toml above.

# Indicates compatibility version with lifecycle
api = "0.2"

# General metadata about the buildpack that is used be the lifecycle
[buildpack]
  id = "com.example.node-engine"
  name = "Node Engine Buildpack"
  version = "0.0.1"

# The list of stacks that the buildpack itself is compatible with
[[stacks]]
 id = "org.cloudfoundry.stacks.cflinuxfs3"

`bin/detect`

For a complete rundown on how the Detect Phase works you can read the Detect Phase section in the packit godocs, but for now I will give you a quick run down. In the Packit library, there is a packit.Detect() function that consumes a packit.DetectFunc. The packit.DetectFunc is created by us (the buildpack author) and contains all of the buildpack specific detection logic. So with that let's laydown some code and talk about it.

cmd/detect/main.go

package main

import (
    "<path/to/project or github.com/<some-org or some-user>/<some-repo>>/node"
	"github.com/cloudfoundry/packit"
)

func main() {
	packit.Detect(node.Detect())
}

node/detect.go

package node

import (
    "fmt"

	"github.com/cloudfoundry/packit"
)

func Detect() packit.DetectFunc {
	return func(context packit.DetectContext) (packit.DetectResult, error) {
		return packit.DetectResult{}, fmt.Errorf("always fail")
	}
}

Alright let's talk about this for a minute. With these pieces of code, we have written a buildpack that will alway detect false. The reason that we have split out definition for the packit.DetectFunc in to its own package is that we make a clear separation in terms of what Packit needs to function and what the business logic for our buildpack, all buildpack specific business logic will go into the node package from now on. This may seem small but if you plan on potentially expanding this buildpack we highly recommend that you follow this structure.

To test out progress so far we can build the detect binary ourselves with the following command:

GOOS=linux go build -ldflags="-s -w" -o ./bin/detect ./cmd/detect/main.go

Once you've done that you should be able to use the pack cli to try and build a container for a nodejs app. For the purposes of this demonstration I will be using the following simple app from the node-engine-cnb linked above. The following command will allow you to build the app:

pack build <app-name> -p path/to/app -b path/to/buildpack-project -v

As a quick note if it is the first time that you have run this command on your machine it may take a while as it pulls down the base images for the app, subsequent runs should be much faster.

You should see some output similar to this:

===> DETECTING
[detector] ======== Output: com.example.node-engine@0.0.1 ========
[detector]
[detector] always fail
[detector] ======== Results ========
[detector] err:  com.example.node-engine@0.0.1 (1)
[detector] ERROR: No buildpack groups passed detection.
[detector] ERROR: Please check that you are running against the correct path.
[detector] ERROR: failed to detect: no buildpacks participating
ERROR: failed with status code: 6

Alright now that we have a skeleton laid out let's make it do something more useful than just fail all of the time. To do that we need to dive into the concept of provides and requires. If you want to read the buildpacks specification for provides and requires you can look here, but I will try and give you the abridged version here. A buildpack's detect binary has as part of it packit.DetectResult pass out a packit.BuildPlan in which there is a list of provisions and requirements. A buildpack can state that it provides dependencies or that it requires dependencies or it can both require and provide dependencies. A buildpack can only detect true if all of its provides match up with requires from itself or a subsequent buildpacks in a buildpack sequence and that all of is requires match up with provides from itself or previous buildpacks in a sequence of buildpacks.

That is a lot of words so let's talk about our situation. For us our buildpack is the only one running in the sequence so in order for us to pass detection we have to both provide node as a dependency but we also need to require node as well. So let's go implement that provide and require relationship in our detect code.

node/detect.go

package node

import (
	"github.com/cloudfoundry/packit"
)

func Detect() packit.DetectFunc {
	return func(context packit.DetectContext) (packit.DetectResult, error) {
		return packit.DetectResult{
			Plan: packit.BuildPlan{
				Provides: []packit.BuildPlanProvision{
					{Name: "node"},
				},
				Requires: []packit.BuildPlanRequirement{
					{Name: "node"},
				},
			},
		}, nil
	}
}

Let's do a quick rundown of what is happening now. In the packit.DetectResult we are now returning a Plan. Inside that plan we state that this buildpack provides the node dependency and that it requires the node dependency. If you were to run the code that the used to build and test our code earlier you should get something that look like this:

===> DETECTING
[detector] ======== Results ========
[detector] pass: com.example.node-engine@0.0.1
[detector] Resolving plan... (try #1)
[detector] com.example.node-engine 0.0.1
===> ANALYZING
[analyzer] Previous image with name "index.docker.io/library/test-node:latest" not found
===> RESTORING
===> BUILDING
[builder] ERROR: failed to build: fork/exec /cnb/buildpacks/com.example.node-engine/0.0.1/bin/build: no such file or directory
ERROR: failed with status code: 7

As you can see detection now passes! However, we still get an error because we have no build binary yet, so let's fix that.

`bin/build`

For a complete on how the Build Phase works you can read the Build Phase section in the packit godocs, but once again I will give you a quick overview. The Packit library has a packit.Build() function which consumes a packit.BuildFunc which contains all of the buildpack specific build logic and is written by us. So lets put down some skeleton code.

cmd/build/main.go

package main

import (
	"<path/to/project or github.com/<some-org or some-user>/<some-repo>>/node"
	"github.com/cloudfoundry/packit"
)

func main() {
	packit.Build(node.Build())
}

node/build.go

package node

import (
	"fmt"

	"github.com/cloudfoundry/packit"
)

func Build() packit.BuildFunc {
	return func(context packit.BuildContext) (packit.BuildResult, error) {
		return packit.BuildResult{}, fmt.Errorf("always fail")
	}
}

We have now written some code that will cause our build process to fail every time. You can test that by ensuring that you have a detect binary built and then by running the following command to build your build binary:

GOOS=linux go build -ldflags="-s -w" -o ./bin/build ./cmd/build/main.go

When you then run the pack cli command from earlier you should see output that looks something like this:

===> DETECTING
[detector] ======== Results ========
[detector] pass: com.example.node-engine@0.0.1
[detector] Resolving plan... (try #1)
[detector] com.example.node-engine 0.0.1
===> ANALYZING
[analyzer] Previous image with name "index.docker.io/library/test-node:latest" not found
===> RESTORING
===> BUILDING
[builder]
[builder] always fail
[builder] ERROR: failed to build: exit status 1
ERROR: failed with status code: 7

Now that we have a build process set up let's talk about how we are going to add our dependency to our final image. To pass dependency metadata into the build process we use the buildpack.toml and add the following fields:

[metadata]
  [[metadata.dependencies]]
    uri = "https://nodejs.org/dist/v12.16.1/node-v12.16.1-linux-x64.tar.xz"

Let's talk about the chunk we just added.

 # This holds section holds buildpack specific metadata
 [metadata]
  [[metadata.dependencies]]
    # The uri for the dependency that is compatible with the stack you are running against
    uri = "https://nodejs.org/dist/v12.16.1/node-v12.16.1-linux-x64.tar.xz"

So let's add some code that parses the uri field out. For toml parsing we generally use BurntSushi's TOML Library, so with that let's write up some quick parsing code.

node/build.go

package node

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"
	"path/filepath"

	"github.com/BurntSushi/toml"
	"github.com/cloudfoundry/packit"
)

func Build() packit.BuildFunc {
	return func(context packit.BuildContext) (packit.BuildResult, error) {
		file, err := os.Open(filepath.Join(context.CNBPath, "buildpack.toml"))
		if err != nil {
			return packit.BuildResult{}, err
		}

		var m struct {
			Metadata struct {
				Dependencies []struct {
					URI string `toml:"uri"`
				} `toml:"dependencies"`
			} `toml:"metadata"`
		}
		_, err = toml.DecodeReader(file, &m)
		if err != nil {
			return packit.BuildResult{}, err
		}

		uri := m.Metadata.Dependencies[0].URI
		fmt.Printf("URI -> %s", uri)

		return packit.BuildResult{}, fmt.Errorf("always fail")
	}
}

Your output should now look something like this:

===> DETECTING
[detector] ======== Results ========
[detector] pass: com.example.node-engine@0.0.1
[detector] Resolving plan... (try #1)
[detector] com.example.node-engine 0.0.1
===> ANALYZING
[analyzer] Previous image with name "index.docker.io/library/test-node:latest" not found
===> RESTORING
===> BUILDING
[builder] URI -> https://nodejs.org/dist/v12.16.1/node-v12.16.1-linux-x64.tar.xz
[builder] ERROR: failed to build: exit status 1
[builder] always fail
ERROR: failed with status code: 7

Now that we have the URI of the dependency that we need to download, let's set up the layer structure for the dependency to be installed on to. We do that with the following piece:

package node

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"
	"path/filepath"

	"github.com/BurntSushi/toml"
	"github.com/cloudfoundry/packit"
)

func Build() packit.BuildFunc {
	return func(context packit.BuildContext) (packit.BuildResult, error) {
		file, err := os.Open(filepath.Join(context.CNBPath, "buildpack.toml"))
		if err != nil {
			return packit.BuildResult{}, err
		}

		var m struct {
			Metadata struct {
				Dependencies []struct {
					URI string `toml:"uri"`
				} `toml:"dependencies"`
			} `toml:"metadata"`
		}
		_, err = toml.DecodeReader(file, &m)
		if err != nil {
			return packit.BuildResult{}, err
		}

		uri := m.Metadata.Dependencies[0].URI
		fmt.Printf("URI -> %s", uri)

		nodeLayer, err := context.Layers.Get("node", packit.LaunchLayer)
		if err != nil {
			return packit.BuildResult{}, err
		}

		err = nodeLayer.Reset()
		if err != nil {
			return packit.BuildResult{}, err
		}

		return packit.BuildResult{}, fmt.Errorf("always fail")
	}
}

Let's talk about the context.Layers.Get() function and the nodeLayer.Reset() function individually. On the packit.BuildContext object there is a field Layers which is a packit.Layers type. The packit.Layers.Get() function takes in the name of a layer and packit.LayerTypes and returns a packit.Layer object that has been populated with any metadata that exists from previous builds of your app. This metadata can be useful in determining whether or not a layer can be reused from cache but we don't need to worry about that for now. The packit.Layer.Reset() function clears all of the metadata and existing files restored from cache for the given layer, giving a clean slate to work with. Now that we have our layers set up, let's download our dependency and untar it on the layer.

package node

import (
	"fmt"
	"io/ioutil"
	"os"
	"os/exec"
	"path/filepath"

	"github.com/BurntSushi/toml"
	"github.com/cloudfoundry/packit"
)

func Build() packit.BuildFunc {
	return func(context packit.BuildContext) (packit.BuildResult, error) {
		file, err := os.Open(filepath.Join(context.CNBPath, "buildpack.toml"))
		if err != nil {
			return packit.BuildResult{}, err
		}

		var m struct {
			Metadata struct {
				Dependencies []struct {
					URI string `toml:"uri"`
				} `toml:"dependencies"`
			} `toml:"metadata"`
		}
		_, err = toml.DecodeReader(file, &m)
		if err != nil {
			return packit.BuildResult{}, err
		}

		uri := m.Metadata.Dependencies[0].URI
		fmt.Printf("URI -> %s\n", uri)

		nodeLayer, err := context.Layers.Get("node", packit.LaunchLayer)
		if err != nil {
			return packit.BuildResult{}, err
		}

		err = nodeLayer.Reset()
		if err != nil {
			return packit.BuildResult{}, err
		}

		downloadDir, err := ioutil.TempDir("", "downloadDir")
		if err != nil {
			return packit.BuildResult{}, err
		}
		defer os.RemoveAll(downloadDir)

		fmt.Println("Downloading dependency...")
		err = exec.Command("curl",
			uri,
			"-o", filepath.Join(downloadDir, "node.tar.xz"),
		).Run()
		if err != nil {
			return packit.BuildResult{}, err
		}

		fmt.Println("Untaring dependency...")
		err = exec.Command("tar",
			"-xf",
			filepath.Join(downloadDir, "node.tar.xz"),
			"--strip-components=1",
			"-C", nodeLayer.Path,
		).Run()
		if err != nil {
			return packit.BuildResult{}, err
		}

		return packit.BuildResult{
			Plan: context.Plan,
			Layers: []packit.Layer{
				nodeLayer,
			},
		}, nil
	}
}

If you rebuild the build binary and run the pack build command once more you will finally have your first successful build, HOORAY! The additional lines that were added are fairly straightforward, we create a temporary directory to put out downloaded tarball into in order to make sure that we don't pollute our image. We then download the dependency tarball with a curl command and untar the resulting tarball directly in the nodeLayer path using tar on the command line. It is worth noting that this is not the most efficient way of handling this in Go, but for demonstration purposes it is the most straightforward. You may notice that we use the --strip-components flag on our tar commands because this particular tarball comes with a top level directory before you reach the lib, bin, and include directories. We want these directories to be at the top level of our layer path because these files are interpreted directly by the lifecycle, which you can read more about here. With this you have a perfectly functional buildpack, which you can test by running a pack build like we did earlier and then running the following docker command if you are using the simple app indicated earlier:

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 -e PORT=8080 <app-name> "node server.js"

You can then verify that this is running by either running:

curl localhost

or visiting localhost:8080 in your web browser. Either way you should expect to see "hello world" as your output.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 3 Commits
cmd		cmd
node		node
.gitignore		.gitignore
README.md		README.md
buildpack.toml		buildpack.toml
go.mod		go.mod
go.sum		go.sum

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How to Write a Cloud Native Buildpack Using Packit

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`buildpack.toml`

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`bin/build`

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How to Write a Cloud Native Buildpack Using Packit

Packit

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Let's Get Started

buildpack.toml

bin/detect

bin/build

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`buildpack.toml`

`bin/detect`

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