Dagger CI/CD Setup

This project has migrated from Taskfile-based CI to Dagger. This document explains the infrastructure setup for the shared Dagger Server.

Architecture

We use a Shared Dagger Server approach for both local development and CI. This allows multiple users to share a single Dagger Engine and its cache, significantly speeding up builds.

Container Engine: Rootless Podman (managed by the dagger-svc user).
Orchestration: System-wide systemd service.
Access: Users connect via TCP (localhost) or Unix Socket.

Server Setup (Admin)

1. Dedicated Service User

A dedicated user dagger-svc owns the Dagger Engine and its cache.

sudo useradd -m -s /bin/bash dagger-svc
sudo loginctl enable-linger dagger-svc

Why Lingering? Lingering is required for rootless users to maintain a persistent background session. It ensures that /run/user/<UID> and the user-level Dagger/Podman namespaces are initialized at boot and remain active even when the user is not logged in.

2. Systemd Service

The engine is managed by a system-wide systemd service located at /etc/systemd/system/dagger-engine.service.

[Unit]
Description=Dagger Engine (Shared Server)
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=dagger-svc
Group=dagger-svc
WorkingDirectory=/home/dagger-svc
# Replace 1003 with the actual UID of dagger-svc
Environment=DOCKER_HOST=unix:///run/user/1003/podman/podman.sock
Environment=XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1003
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nix run github:dagger/nix/v0.11.4#dagger -- engine --addr tcp://0.0.0.0:8080
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Client Configuration

To connect to the shared engine, users should set the _DAGGER_RUNNER_HOST environment variable.

Local Development (.env)

The project uses a .env file to manage the connection string. Ensure your .env contains:

_DAGGER_RUNNER_HOST=tcp://127.0.0.1:8080

Usage

Once the environment is set up, you can run the Dagger pipeline:

nix develop --command dagger call -m ci check --source .

CI Integration (Codeberg/Forgejo)

The CI workflow in .forgejo/workflows/ci.yml is configured to use the Dagger module located in the ci/ directory.

Check Suite: Runs analysis and tests in parallel.
Builds: Produces Linux and Android artifacts.
Caching: When using the shared engine, CI runners benefit from the persistent cache on the host.

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