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Bindle Documentation

Installing Bindle

From Source

Prerequisites:

  • A recent version of Rust and Cargo

Clone the repository at https://github.com/deislabs/bindle, and then use make to build the binaries:

$ git clone https://github.com/deislabs/bindle.git
$ cd bindle
$ make build

You will now have binaries built in target/debug/bindle and target/debug/bindle-server.

From the Binary Releases

Every release of Bindle provides compiled releases for a variety of operating systems. These compiled releases can be manually downloaded and installed. Please note these instructions will work on Linux, MacOS, and Windows (in PowerShell):

  1. Download your desired version from the releases page
  2. Unpack it (tar -xzf bindle-v0.8.0-linux-amd64.tar.gz)
  3. Move the bindle and bindle CLIs to their desired destinations somewhere in your $PATH (e.g. mv bindle bindle-server /usr/local/bin/ on Unix-like systems or mv *.exe C:\Windows\system32\ on Windows)

From there, you should be able to run the client in your terminal emulator. If your terminal cannot find Bindle, check to make sure that your $PATH environment variable is set correctly.

Validating

If you'd like to validate the download, checksums can be downloaded from https://bindle.blob.core.windows.net/releases/checksums-v0.4.1.txt

From Canary Builds

“Canary” builds are versions of Bindle that are built from master. They are not official releases, and may not be stable. However, they offer the opportunity to test the cutting edge features before they are released.

Here are links to the common builds:

Using Bindle

The bindle program is the client. The bindle-server program is the HTTP server.

Before using the bindle client, set the BINDLE_URL environment variable:

$ export BINDLE_URL="http://localhost:8080/v1/"

To bootstrap a new bindle instance:

  1. Create a directory to store your bindles. We recommend ${HOME}/.bindle/bindles. You can also skip this step and bindles will be stored in the /tmp directory
  2. Start your bindle-server, pointing it to your bindle directory.
  3. Create an invoice.toml
  4. Sign the invoice.toml
  5. Use the bindle client to push the invoice to the server

Here's a concrete version of the above for UNIX-like systems:

$ mkdir -p $HOME/.bindle/bindles
# This step is optional, but will give you a bit more log output if you are curious
$ export RUST_LOG=error,warp=info,bindle=debug
# This step is to create signing key for client
$ bindle keys create "VishnuJin<me@example.com>"
$ bindle-server --directory ${HOME}/.bindle/bindles --unauthenticated

# In another terminal window
$ cat <<EOF > invoice.toml
bindleVersion = "1.0.0"

[bindle]
name = "mybindle"
version = "0.1.0"
authors = ["Matt Butcher <matt.butcher@microsoft.com>"]
description = "My first bindle"

[annotations]
myname = "myvalue"
EOF
$ export BINDLE_URL="http://localhost:8080/v1/"
# signing the invoice
$ bindle sign-invoice -o signed-invoice.toml invoice.toml
$ bindle push-invoice signed-invoice.toml
Invoice mybindle/0.1.0 created

You can verify that this is working by fetching the invoice:

$ bindle info mybindle/0.1.0
# request for mybindle/0.1.0
bindleVersion = "1.0.0"

[bindle]
name = "mybindle"
description = "My first bindle"
version = "0.1.0"
authors = ["Matt Butcher <matt.butcher@microsoft.com>"]

[annotations]
myname = "myvalue"

To learn more about the Bindle command, run bindle --help.

Configuring Authentication

There are currently two authentication types supported by Bindle:

  • GitHub OAuth2
  • HTTP Basic Auth (username/password)

To use GitHub OAuth2, you must supply --github-client-id and --github-client-secret at startup.

To use HTTP Basic authentication, you must generate an htpasswd file using Bcrypt:

$ htpasswd -Bc htpasswd admin
New password:
Re-type new password:
Adding password for user admin

(The htpasswd program comes on many Linux/Unix distros. Officially it is part of the Apache Web Server project.)

Then you need to supply the --htpasswd-file option at bindle-server startup:

$ bindle-server --htpasswd-file test/data/htpasswd

Currently, only bcrypt is supported in htpasswd files. At the time of this writing, bcrypt is the most secure algorithm supported by htpasswd.

Configuring Signing

Keys are used for signing and verification. Keys are stored as base64-encoded Ed25519 keys inside of specially formatted TOML files.

Verification Keys

Verification keyrings are used to verify signatures. They contain annotated public keys. You should add the keys from trusted creators, hosts, proxies, and verifiers to this file.

The file exists in your system's XDG_DATA_DIR in the bindle subdirectory. (On a mac, this will be something like $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/bindle/. On Linux, it will be $HOME/.local/share.)

The file's content looks something like this:

version = "1.0"

[[key]]
label = "Matt <example@example.com>"
key = "SOME_PUBLIC_KEY"
roles = ["creator"]

[[key]]
label = "bindle.example.com"
key = "SOME_PUBLIC_KEY"
roles = ["host"]

At the bare minimum, a key file must have the version = "1.0" line. Each entry represents a key that you trust. The label is a user-friendly string that tells about the key. The roles lists all of the roles that you trust this key to perform (creator, host, proxy, and verifier). The key is a base64-encoded Ed25519 public key. Some keys have a signed piece of metadata called label_signature. This field contains a base64-encoded signature of the label, ensuring that the label has not been changed. The signature is generated using the private key that corresponds to this public key, thus ensuring that (a) only the keyholder can create this signature, and (b) anyone with the key entry can verify the signature. This adds additional trust, because it ensures that the label is the label that the keyholder desired. However, in many cases this additional level of trust may not be necessary or desired.

Signing Keys

A signing key is used when Bindle needs to sign something. The file secret_keys.toml is created in your system's XDG_DATA_DIR, in the bindle/ subdirectory. (On a mac, this will be something like $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/bindle/. On Linux, it will be $HOME/.local/share.)

The file's content will look something like this:

version = "1.0"

[[key]]
label = "Matt <example@example.com>"
keypair = "KEYDATA_GOES_IN_HERE"
roles = ["creator"]

A user only needs one such keypair (though a user is free to have more). This file can be moved from system to system, just like OpenPGP or SSH key sets.

  • To create a signing key for a client, use bindle keys create
  • By default, if Bindle does not find an existing keyring, it creates one of these when it first starts.

Specification

  1. The specification for the Bindle format and design begins with the Bindle Specification.
  2. The invoice spec describes the invoice format.
  3. The parcel spec defines the parcel format.
  4. The label spec describes the parcel label format.
  5. The protocol specification describes the HTTP protocol for storing and retrieving Bindles.
  6. The keyring protocol specification describes an HTTPS protocol for distributing keys.
  7. Finally, the Standalone Bindle Specification describes a format for packaging up a Bindle into a portable artifact.

Additional Docs

  • The filesystem layout for Bindle is not a specification, but is described here
  • We have some special use cases for WebAssembly. Many of these concepts apply to other languages/platforms as well.