Dev CI CD

Documentation for Local Development Testing and CI/CD Workflow

Steps

Here are the steps that need to be carried out during local development and testing of the dev CI/CD:

Clone the Project Repository

First, we need to clone our project repository in a directory/path accessible by everyone on the server for this server its /var/www/aihomework/dev

Next:

cd /var/www/
sudo mkdir aihomework
cd /var/www/aihomework
sudo git clone <project-url> dev
cd /var/www/aihomework/dev

Install Dependencies

Navigate to the project repository and install the necessary dependencies.

cd /var/www/aihomework/dev
sudo npm install -g yarn pnpm
yarn -v
sudo yarn install
sudo yarn start # (execution only needed for testing on dev)
sudo yarn build

On successful installation of the above commands, your application should be up and running and exposed to the default port 8080 using the server's IP address. (e.g., http://ipaddress:8080).

Moving on, we will proceed to write the dev.yml CI/CD workflow, and also create our aihomeworkprod.service file, startappprod.sh file which will be created under the server-script directory in our hng_boilerplate_expressjs root directory.

aihomeworkprod.service

Copy code
[Unit]
Description=AIHomework-Prod
After=network.target

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/var/www/aihomework/prod
ExecStart=/bin/bash /var/www/aihomework/prod/server-script/startappprod.sh
#Restart=on-failure
#RestartSec=20s
StartLimitInterval=0

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

startappprod.sh

#!/bin/bash

cd /var/www/aihomework/prod/
/usr/bin/yarn prod

Create and Configure GitHub Actions Workflow for dev.yml on Push to Dev Branch The below dev.yml CI/CD workflow should be written on the dev branch and configured to trigger on push to the dev branch.

dev.yml

name: Build, Test, and Deploy for Dev Branch

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - dev

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: self-hosted
    defaults:
      run:
        working-directory: /var/www/aihomework/dev

    steps:
      - name: Pull from github
        id: pull
        run: |
          git pull origin dev

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: yarn install

      - name: Run Test
        run: yarn test --passWithNoTests

      - name: Build the dist
        run: yarn build

      - name: Setup service file
        run: sudo cp server-script/aihomeworkdev.service /etc/systemd/system

      - name: Start the app
        run: |
          sudo systemctl daemon-reload
          sudo systemctl restart aihomeworkdev

Collaborative Development Guidelines

Effective collaboration requires adherence to the following best practices:

Synchronize code merges by ensuring the next team member to push a new code change is working with the most recent codebase. Always perform a git pull to update your local repository with remote changes before pushing any local commits.

Challenges Faced

During the course of this project, we encountered several challenges:

Frequent new commit merges from the backend team necessitated ongoing updates to the package.json file to ensure successful execution of our CI/CD workflows for both development and production on GitHub Actions.

Conclusion

Following the outlined installation steps and procedures has facilitated the smooth and efficient deployment of this project, ensuring a robust CI/CD workflow.