Preparing development environment and first rkt build

This is an example configuration and quick start guide for the installation of rkt from source on Ubuntu 16.04 GNOME. For a detailed developer's reference, see the rkt hacking guide.

Get rkt repo and install dependencies

In this example ~/Repos is a personal workspace where all repos are stored

$ mkdir ~/Repos && cd ~/Repos
$ mkdir -p ~/.local/gopath/src/github.com/rkt
$ sudo apt-get install git
$ git -C ~/.local/gopath/src/github.com/rkt clone https://github.com/rkt/rkt.git
$ ln -s ~/.local/gopath/src/github.com/rkt/rkt rkt

On a fresh system installation, few additional software packages are needed to correctly build rkt:

$ sudo ~/Repos/rkt/scripts/install-deps-debian-sid.sh

See also the dependencies page.

Installing Go Programming Language for a single-user

$ cd ~/Downloads
$ wget https://storage.googleapis.com/golang/go1.6.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz
$ tar -xvf go1.6.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz
$ mv go ~/.local

Add GO variables to .bashrc file:

export PATH=~/.local/bin:~/.local/go/bin:$PATH
export GOPATH=~/.local/gopath
export GOROOT=~/.local/go

Install ccache (optional step)

Ccache can save a lot of time. If you build a kernel once, most of the compiled code can just be taken from the cache. Ccache can be configured in a few easy steps:

$ sudo apt-get install ccache
$ ccache --max-size=10G
$ sudo ln -s /usr/bin/ccache /usr/local/bin/gcc

The maximum cache size is 10GB now (the default value is too small to cache kernel compilation).

Building rkt

Run the autogen and configure commands with the relevant arguments, for example (kvm as flavor):

$ cd ~/Repos/rkt
$ ./autogen.sh && ./configure --enable-functional-tests --enable-incremental-build --with-stage1-flavors=kvm

Now build rkt with:

$ make V=2 -j

REMEMBER: If you want to test somebody else's changes:

$ git checkout <branch>
$ make clean
$ ./autogen.sh && ./configure <proper arguments>

A few useful commands

Just build and run tests:

$ ./tests/build-and-run-tests.sh -f kvm

Run only functional tests after build:

$ make functional-check

Check only one test:

$ make functional-check GO_TEST_FUNC_ARGS='-run TEST_NAME_HERE'

See more in the tests readme page.

Simple usage of rkt container (run, exit, remove):

$ sudo ./build-rkt-*/bin/rkt run --insecure-options=image --interactive docker://busybox
$ exit
$ sudo ./build-rkt-*/bin/rkt gc --grace-period=0

Remove all network interfaces created by rkt:

for link in $(ip link | grep rkt | cut -d':' -f2 | cut -d'@' -f1);
    sudo ip link del "${link}"
done

Simplify changes in go files, before commit:

gofmt -s -w file.go