DAY-5: Build Tools and Package Managers

WHAT ARE BUILD AND PACKAGE MANAGER TOOLS❓🤔

• The application needs to be deployed on a production server

• For that, we want to package the application into a single movable file (artifact), also called "building the code"

• This is what a build tool or package manager tool does

• Build tool installs all the dependencies, compiles and compresses the code

WHAT IS AN ARTIFACT AND ARTIFACT REPOSITORY❓🤔

• Artifact: Includes application code and all its dependencies

• Artifact Repository: Storage for artifacts

• We need Artifact Repository: To deploy artifacts multiple times, have backup etc

• Examples: Nexus, Jfrog Artifactory

ARTIFACTS 📦

“Artifact files look different for each programming language”
Examples:
1. Java -> Jar OR War
2. JavaScript -> Zip or Tar

BUILD TOOLS FOR PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES 🛠️

1. Java -> Maven & Gradle

2. JavaScript -> npm, yarn & webpack

3. Python -> pip

4. C/C++ -> conan

5. C# -> NuGet

6. Golang -> dep

7. Ruby -> RubyGems

   Note: Each build tool has a file to manage dependencies

Let’s take Java and JavaScript and their build tools and package manager as an example to understand better!💡

JAVA PROJECT USING MAVEN AS BUILD TOOLS

1. Initialize a Maven project using any IDE such as intelliJ for example

2. You will get a lot of files

3. Now pom.xml file is used in Maven to manage dependencies

4. Add all the dependencies your project requires in the pom.xml file

5. Use the command “mvn install” to build the project

6. Now look into the newly created target folder

7. Your artifact must be there with the extension “.jar”

8. Run the application using “java -jar <name_of_jar>”

   

   

JAVA PROJECT USING GRADLE AS BUILD TOOLS

1. Initialize a Gradle project using any IDE such as intelliJ for example

2. You will get a lot of files

3. Now build.gradle file is used in Gradle to manage dependencies

4. Add all the dependencies your project requires in build.gradle file

5. Use the command “./gradlew build” to build the project

6. Now look into the newly created build/libs folder

7. Your artifact must be there with the extension “.jar”

8. Run the application using “java -jar <name_of_jar>”

   

   

JAVASCRIPT PROJECT USING NPM

1. An artifact of JavaScript is a tar or zip file

2. There is no special artifact type defined

3. Note that in JavaScript we have package managers and not build tools, those are npm and yarn

4. So initialize a Node.js project

5. Here package.json file is used to manage dependencies

6. Use the "npm install" command to install all the dependencies

7. Note that npm just installs the dependencies but doesn’t transpile the code

8. So you can copy the zip or tar file created using npm to the server then unpack or unzip it and then install all the dependencies there using npm

   

   

PUBLISH THE ARTIFACT 🚀

1. Build a jar or zip file

2. Push to an artifact repository to save those packages for later use or for downloading on a remote server

3. Build Tools have commands for that as well!

4. Then you can download (curl, wget) it anywhere

CHANGE IN HOW WE USE ARTIFACTS 🔀

1. We don't keep jar or zip files, because we have Docker

2. We don't build them locally, because we have Jenkins and other Build Automation Tools

BUILD TOOLS AND DOCKER 🚀

1. No need to build and move different artifact types (e.g. Jar, War, Zip)
   
Just 1 artifact type: Docker Image
 We build those Docker images from the applications

2. No need for a repository for each file type
   
Just 1 Docker Image

3. No need to install dependencies on the server!
 Execute the install command inside Docker Image

4. Docker Image is an alternative for all other artifact types

WHY DEVOPS ENGINEERS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT BUILD TOOLS ❓🤔

1. You help developers build the application because you know where and how it will run on deployment servers

2. You need to configure the build automation tool or CI/CD Pipeline, like execute tests on the build servers, build and package into Docker Image, run the application on the server

Download the notes here: Build-tools-and-package-managers

𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐞𝐝! 𝐍𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐞𝐞 Artifact Repository manager using Nexus or JFrog.