Simplify Your Build Process with XC Tasks

Overview

XC is a great tool I've been using to document build steps in the readme and simplify the build process. It is easy to integrate and simplifies the code management workflow. Here I'll cover how to use XC Tasks for your projects.

XC Tasks Github Repository: https://github.com/joerdav/xc

Main Build, Push, and Test Environment

With XC Tasks, I have created a task called main-build-push-test-env which builds, tags, and pushes the Docker image to the remote registry. Additionally, it deploys the application with Caprover.

The main-build-push-test-env task requires executing these four subtasks:

1. build-test-image
2. tag-test-image-remote
3. push-test-image-remote
4. caprover-deploy-test

Building and Tagging Docker Images

1. Build the Docker Image

The build-test-image task builds the Docker image using the docker build command:

docker build --pull --rm -t image-name:latest .

2. Tag the Local Image with the Remote Name

The tag-test-image-remote task tags the locally built image with the remote registry name:

docker tag image-name:latest $REGISTRY_ADDRESS/image-name:latest

Pushing Docker Images to Remote Registry

3. Push the Local Image to the Remote Registry

The push-test-image-remote task pushes the tagged local image to the remote registry:

docker push $REGISTRY_ADDRESS/image-name:latest

Deploying the Application with Caprover

4. Deploy the Application using Caprover

The caprover-deploy-test task deploys the application to Caprover using the caprover deploy command:

caprover deploy --imageName $REGISTRY_ADDRESS/image-name:latest

Syntax

The syntax that XC is looking for might look something like this at the end of your README.md file: You can see the raw syntax here

Conclusion

By using XC Tasks to simplify the build process, you only need to maintain the tasks definitions in your readme file, rather than remembering the process or maintaining multiple scripts. This streamlined approach will help you efficiently manage your deployment pipeline while ensuring that your application remains up-to-date and properly deployed.