CD workflow to build and push Docker image

[wkyoshida]

Terms

• I have searched open and closed issues
• I agree to follow activist's Code of Conduct

Issue

This issue is for a GH Action to run a workflow for the CD in our CI/CD. The goal here would be to:

• trigger the workflow when a PR is merged
  • Ref: Running your pull_request workflow when a pull request merges
• build the Docker images for the project
• tag the images with the latest tag and an identifying tag, e.g. the commit SHA
• push the images to a registry
  • initially, one idea was to use a self-hosted registry; however another option could be to simply use the registry already hosted by GitHub Packages itself (https://ghcr.io)
  • Ref: About the Container registry

---

Obs:

• Building the images on PR merges would allow for the newly built images to then be spun up in a staging environment to validate changes before they go live to the production environment
• The images built with the workflow might have to differ slightly from the images used for local development
• The workflow can start with building only the backend for now, as there is still some uncertainty in how deployment for the frontend will be done
• With this CD in place, PR merges would likely have to only merge in changes that do not break the project
  • There may be some concerns with this new requirement, given some current development processes, but we can discuss
• Related to Splitting Development and Production #529

[wkyoshida]

Just noting here:

Thinking that a self-hosted registry will probably be our best bet actually.
According to docs, there are only 500MB of free storage in https://ghcr.io/, which would be too limiting for Docker image storage.

[GrandSuccess87]

Hey @wkyoshida! Is help still needed here?

I'll keep an eye out for your reply if there's an area where I can help - I'm looking to gain more experience with CI/CD pipelines!

[andrewtavis]

Hey @GrandSuccess87 👋 I think you'd be fine setup a workflow that you'd see as fitting and we can check it in a PR :) How does this sound? 😊

[GrandSuccess87]

Hii @andrewtavis, that sounds like a plan to me - I look forward to working on this!

[rishabmamgai]

Hi @andrewtavis, I have opened a base PR for this :). Would like your thoughts about it.

Few questions -

1. Which env configs we want as secrets?
2. Has anyone explored a way to test github workflows before?

[andrewtavis]

Thanks for the contribution, @rishabmamgai! Answers to your questions:

1. I'll have to check on this and get back to you, but hopefully we'll know more after the next developer sync next weekend (the 23rd of August)
2. Normally what people have done is made it on their fork and then experimented with them there

[rishabmamgai]

Hi @andrewtavis hope you had a good weekend. Did you get to discuss about what goes to github secrets?