Batch building

Batch building is used to provide a set of AppImages for a specific version of LibreOffice (and it is the mechanism used to provide AppImage releases on the official website).

Instructions on how to build the set of AppImages are written in a simple YAML file, which is the only required argument of the batch verb; please provide a valid path to the YAML file (remember that if only the name of the YAML file, complete with .yml extension, is provided, is considered local to the current folder). For example:

loaih batch daily.yml

Plenty of examples of those YAML files can be found inside the source repository, although some fields/variables of the file might need an explanation.

Fields of the YAML file

Here's the definition and explanation of all the variables that can be indicated in the YAML file.

Basic structure

The file requires exactly two sections, one called data and the other one called builds.

`data` section

Contains the general information valid for any one of the AppImage to be built. loaih will honor the following key-value pairs:

download: This is the name of the folder where all the needed archives would be downloaded to. Contrary to the build verb, using batch building will conserve all the downloads (except for daily and prereleases). Defaults to /var/tmp/downloads;
force: disables the check for existing builds, thus forcing loaih to rebuild the entire set of AppImages described in the file. Defaults to False (so: check previous existence of the build and skip it if found);
repo: this is the "public available" storage where final builds would be published. It can be a local folder (and in this case it is referred as a "local" repository) or it can be an HTTP/HTTPS address (in which case this is considered as "remote" repository). See below under Remote repositories for more explanations. Defaults to /srv/http/appimage;
remote_host: the name of the remote host that can be reached via rsync/ssh (see below under Remote repositories for more information). Defaults to '';
remote_path: the base path under which the builds would be shared. Defaults to /srv/http/appimage;
sign: if set to true, signs every AppImages built with the default GPG key. Defaults to False (do not sign builds).

`builds` section

This section is a list of objects, each of which have the following key-pair values that loaih would honor; each object would represent a single AppImage:

query: the query to use when determining the version of the build (see Usage - versions for a more complete explanation). This is a required parameter;
language: the set of locales to support, comma separated (e.g. 'en,it,de'), or one of the predefined set: basic, standard and full. Defaults to 'basic' if not specified;
offline_help: whether the AppImage should contain the help pages, defined as boolean value (true/false). Defaults to 'false' if not specified;
portable: whether the AppImage should be portable or not, defined as a boolean value (true/false). Defaults to 'false' if not specified.

Expected behavior

For each of the items in the builds list, loaih does the following operations, in this order:

checks if the AppImage is already available in repo (data section). If it is, the build is skipped (unless force has been defined in the data section);
checks if the binary deb archives have already been downloaded. If not, downloads the required archives;
based on the options of each object, it unpacks the needed archives, fixes the sources and builds the AppImage in a temporary folder;
proceeds to calculate MD5 checksums of each new file;
the built files are then moved to the publishing folder;
if needed, "generic" links to the last versions are produced and published, also (e.g. when the script has just finished building the just released 'fresh' version of LibreOffice, it would create the necessary LibreOffice-fresh.*.AppImage* links;
if daily or prerelease versions has been built, removes the related source packages from the download location (to ensure a following run will re-download the sources, which will likely clash with previous versions' ones).

Verbosity

The script would build all the AppImages silently by default (and likely, seemingly stuck); if you need to follow the building process, use the -v (or --verbose) flag, which is the only option available for the batch verb.

Remote repositories

If the parameter repo in the data section refers to a remote location, loaih can upload the new builds automatically using rsync and ssh, by honoring the remote_host and remote_path key-pairs.

For this mechanism to work, please configure an ssh_config stanza for the host you will indicate in remote_host for the user you plan to use to build the AppImages with; also, ensure password-less login can be performed (using SSH private/public key pairs).

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