vedv

vedv

A tool for developing in a secure, isolated and reproducible environment

This is a democratic project not a dictatorship, so you have the freedom to join to it and build the new features you need for the benefit of everyone

About

This is a tool for developing applications in a secure, isolated and reproducible environment with virtual machines using a Docker-like workflow.

Many apps are made for desktop environments, others apps rely on systemd, and others technologies that doesn't work well in an OCI-compliant container. The software we are developing needs to be tested on a system as close as possible to the one where it is going to be executed, Sometimes it is very difficult to satisfy the requirements with Docker and we have to use virtual machines missing the docker workflow. This is why I started the development of vedv. I hope you find it useful.

Tested OS

👉 This tool does not work with nested virtualization, it must be installed and executed on a real machine. It's tested on the following OS:

Manjaro

Runtime Dependencies:

# SYSTEM: Linux yuniel-pc 6.1.44-1-MANJARO #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed Aug  9 09:02:26 UTC 2023 x86_64 GNU/Linux
# YAY
bash 5.1.016-2
python 3.11.3-2
python-pip 23.2.1-1
virtualbox 7.0.10-1
openbsd-netcat 1.225_1-1
sshpass 1.10-1
python-pip 23.2.1-1
libxml2 2.11.4-1
# PIP
dockerfile-parse 2.0.0
petname 2.6

Ubuntu

Runtime Dependencies:

# SYSTEM: Linux user-MS-7D43 6.2.0-26-generic #26~22.04.1-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Jul 13 16:27:29 UTC 2 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
# APT
bash 5.1-6ubuntu1
curl 7.81.0-1ubuntu1.13
libxml2-utils 2.9.13+dfsg-1ubuntu0.3
netcat-openbsd 1.218-4ubuntu1
python3-pip 22.0.2+dfsg-1ubuntu0.3
python3 3.10.6-1~22.04
sshpass 1.09-1
virtualbox-7.0 7.0.10-158379~Ubuntu~jammy
# PIP
dockerfile-parse 2.0.1
petname 2.6

Install

From package manager

Install on Manjaro

sudo pacman -Syu --noconfirm --needed yay &&
  yay -Sy --noconfirm --needed vedv-git &&
  sudo pacman -Syu --noconfirm --needed "$(mhwd-kernel -li | grep -Po '\(\Klinux\d+\S*(?=\))')-virtualbox-host-modules" &&
  sudo vboxreload

From git repository

For installation from source code is required to have installed git and make. It's recommended to install bmon to see the download/upload activity and vim as text editor.

Clone the repository and switch to vedv directory

from github

git clone https://github.com/yunielrc/vedv.git && cd vedv

Select the last stable version

git checkout "$(git tag --sort='version:refname' | grep -Po '^v\d+\.\d+\.\d+$' | tail -n 1)"

Install on Manjaro

make install-deps-manjaro && sudo make install

Install on Ubuntu

make install-deps-ubuntu && sudo make install

Install on any other linux distribution

Install runtime dependencies manually and run the command below:

sudo make install

It's highly recommended for any other linux distro than manjaro and ubuntu to import and run an image from virtualbox gui before running vedv to guarantee that virtualbox is working properly.

Download an alpine image

wget --header='User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/115.0.0.0 Safari/537.36' 'https://onedrive.live.com/download?resid=DBA0B75F07574EAA%21272&authkey=!AP8U5cI4V7DusSg' -qO alpine-inv.ova

Import the image from virtualbox gui:

Open Virtualbox
Click on File menu > Import Appliance
Import the image alpine-inv.ova
Start the alpine-x86_64 virtual machine

If you have any problem running vedv on your linux distro, it can be a missing dependency, please open a Bug issue.

Configure

👉 If you don't see the registration mail in your inbox, check the spam folder.

Register at https://registry.vedv.dev

Create app password

Go to https://registry.vedv.dev/settings/user/security
Scroll to the end up to the section: Devices & sessions

Write on App Name: vedv
Click on Create new app password
Copy the generated password

Set the credentials

Copy the config to your home directory

cp /etc/skel/.vedv.env ~

Edit the config, set the registry credentials, save and exit

cd && vim .vedv.env

Usage

Show the help

vedv --help

# command output:
Usage:
vedv COMMAND

A tool for developing in a secure and reproducible environment

Flags:
  -h, --help    show this help

Management Commands:
  container     manage containers
  image         manage images
  builder       manage builder
  registry      manage registry

Run 'vedv COMMAND --help' for more information on a command.

Start a container

Download an image with custom name, create a container and start it

To see the download activity, install bmon, open it bmon -b and select the network interface

vedv image pull -n alpine admin@alpine/alpine-3.17.3-x86_64
# 10.399s 90Mbps --> download + import + creation time
vedv container create -n alpine alpine
#  1.660s
# starting a container can take up to 1 minute the first time or more
# deppending on your hardware and the image os
vedv container start -w alpine
# 13.395s --> startup + sshd service time to be ready

Or download an image and create a container, then start it

vedv container create -n alpine admin@alpine/alpine-3.17.3-x86_64
# starting a container can take up to 1 minute the first time or more
# deppending on your hardware and the image os
vedv container start alpine

Show running container

vedv container ls

Login to the container

If you see the error: Connection timed out during banner exchange, the container is starting, wait around 10 seconds and try again. To avoid that you can starts the container with the --wait flag

If you run the login command and the container is stopped, it is started automatically

# login to a container can take up to 1 minute the first time or more
# deppending on your hardware and the image os
vedv container login alpine

Play with it :)

Exit the container and remove it

vedv container rm --force alpine

Show the image and copy its name to remove

vedv image ls

Remove the image

vedv image rm <your-image-name>

Our Application

This is the sample app from https://www.docker.com/101-tutorial/. Thanks to Docker.

We will be working with a simple todo list manager that is running in Node.js.

Getting our App

Clone the app repository and switch to its directory

from github:

git clone https://github.com/yunielrc/todo-101.git && cd todo-101

Building the App's Container Image

Create a file named Vedvfile in the same folder as the file package.json with the following contents.

# Download the image from the registry and import it
FROM admin@alpine/alpine-3.17.3-x86_64
# Set the user, create it if doesn't exist and change the owner
# of WORKDIR recursively
USER root
# Set the working directory and create it if doesn't exist
WORKDIR /app
# Run commands on the current working directory
RUN apk add -U nodejs~18 npm yarn
# Copy package.json to the current working directory
COPY package.json .
# Copy yarn.lock to the current working directory
COPY yarn.lock .
# Install dependencies
RUN yarn install --production
# Copy the service file and set the permissions
COPY --chmod 0755 ./root/etc/init.d/todo-101 /etc/init.d/todo-101
# Add the service to the default runlevel (auto-start on boot)
RUN rc-update add todo-101
# Copy the source code to the current working directory
COPY . .
# Start the service
RUN rc-service todo-101 start
# Expose port 3000
EXPOSE 3000/tcp

Vedvfile syntax is highly inspired by Dockerfile, but with some differences

Save the file and exit
Build it

vedv image build -n todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64
# 55.360s --> [download] + [import] + creation + startup + build + stop time

Create a container from the image

vedv container create -p 3000:3000/tcp -n todo-101 todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64
# 1.766s
# When the ports are the same like `3000:3000`  the command below is equivalent
# vedv container create -p 3000/tcp -n todo-101 todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64
vedv container start -w todo-101
# 13.631s

Open your browser and go to http://localhost:3000

You should see the todo list manager app

vedv container rm --force todo-101
# 2.829s

Updating the Source Code

In the src/static/js/app.js file, update line 56 to use the new empty text.

-  <p className="text-center">No items yet! Add one above!</p>
+  <p className="text-center">You have no todo items yet! Add one above!</p>

Let's build our updated version of the image, using the same command we used before.

vedv image build -n todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64
# 30.420s --> [download] + [import] + [creation] + startup + build + stop time

Each line like the one below is a deleted layer: 0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%

In this case 4 layers were deleted, starting from COPY . . to the end of the file, and the layer POWEROFF added during the build process.

Let's start a new container using the updated code.

vedv container create -p 3000/tcp -n todo-101 todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64
# 1.811s
vedv container start -w todo-101
# 13.698s

Refresh your browser on http://localhost:3000 and you should see your updated help text!
Remove the container

vedv container rm --force todo-101
# 3.207s

Push the image to the registry

👉 There is only 200MB of free space for each user at the moment, so use it for testing purposes only.

vedv image push <your_user_id>@alpine/todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64
# 1m 31.28s 12Mbps
# If you want to push the image with a different name run the command below:
# vedv image push -n todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64 <your_user_id>@alpine/<your_image_name>-1.0.0-x86_64

On finish open your browser and go to https://registry.vedv.dev/apps/files/?dir=/00-user-images

You should see the collection:

<your_user_id>@alpine

Click on the collection and you should see the image file an its .sha256sum file:

todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64.ova
todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64.ova.sha256sum

The uploaded image size is around 130MB, to give chance other users to test vedv, please delete the image from the registry and push an image link instead. Thanks.

👍 Congratulations, you have builded and uploaded your first image to the registry.

Share your image

By default the images are private, only you can see them.

To make your image public, you need to share it with the group public.

Open your browser and go to https://registry.vedv.dev/apps/files/?dir=/00-user-images
Click the Share button on the image you want to share

Or click the Share folder menu item

On the Sharing panel search for public group and select it

If the image is shared the collection must have the Shared icon

👍 Congratulations, your image is Public and other users can download and use it

Push an image link to the registry

If your registry has images that weights MB, to give chance other users to test vedv, please delete that images and push image links instead. Thanks.

Due to the limited storage space at the moment, you should push image links to the registry.

Export the image to a file with the .ova extension

vedv image export todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64 todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64.ova
# 8.157s

Upload the image and the .sha256sum to OneDrive or Google Drive or any http server,

⚠️ OneDrive and Google Drive services are always trying to make it difficult to download files with no recognized clients.

Share on OneDrive

Go to https://onedrive.live.com
Open the image file menu and Click on Embed as shown in the image below

Click on Generate button

Reaload onedrive page and Click on Shared

Click on Links Tab and Copy it

Open your terminal and save the image link to a variable

Replace <image_link> with the link you have copied

image='onedrive=<image_link>'

Repeat the steps 1-5 for sharing the .sha256sum file
On the same terminal save the .sha256sum link to a variable

Replace <sum_link> with the link you have copied

sum='onedrive=<sum_link>'

Push the image link to the registry

On the same terminal execute the command below

vedv image push-link --image-address "$image" --checksum-address "$sum" \
 <your_user_id>@alpine/todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64
 # 2.706s

Remove the image to download it again to test the link

vedv image rm todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64
# 0.995s

Pull the image from the link

Use the flag --no-cache to download the image again

vedv image pull --no-cache -n todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64 \
  <your_user_id>@alpine/todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64
# 17.334s 90Mbps

👍 Congratulations, you have uploaded your image link to the registry and saved space for other users.

Share on Google Drive

Go to https://drive.google.com/
Open the image file menu and Click on Share as shown in the image below

Click on General access and select Anyone with the link

Copy the link and click on Done

Open your terminal and save the image link to a variable

Replace <image_link> with the link you have copied

image='gdrive-big=<image_link>'

Repeat the steps 1-5 for sharing the .sha256sum file
On the same terminal save the .sha256sum link to a variable

Replace <sum_link> with the link you have copied

sum='gdrive-small=<sum_link>'

Push the image link to the registry

On the same terminal execute the command below

vedv image push-link --image-address "$image" --checksum-address "$sum" \
 <your_user_id>@alpine/todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64

If you see the error below: error downloading file from https://drive.google.com/file/d/......

Execute the command below at least 5 times:

wget --no-check-certificate \
 --connect-timeout 10 \
 --header "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/115.0.0.0 Safari/537.36" \
 -O "alpine-3.18.3-x86_64-fat-inv.ova.sha256sum" "https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1X5v6DYZeEo3zLLd2ZYIEbRO4hI1IQ9gY"

If google drive respond with ERROR 500 or ERROR 403, and you make a right copy of the url, the error is due google drive it's having problems or it can be doing some nasty things to make it hard to download.

Remove the image to download it again to test the link

vedv image rm todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64

Pull the image from the link

Use the flag --no-cache to download the image again

vedv image pull --no-cache -n todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64 \
  <your_user_id>@alpine/todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64

Remove the image

vedv image rm --force todo-101-alpine-1.0.0-x86_64

👍 Congratulations, you have uploaded your image link to the registry and saved space for other users.

Vedvfile instructions

# --------------
# Text surrounded by `` on the comments here is for emphasize.

# Environment variables are always expanded in the Vedvfile keeping its quotes,
# even those surrounded by ''. To avoid a variable expansion on Vedvfile escape
# it, e.g.: \$VAR
# The scope of environment variables is Vedvfile and image os.

# Globbing is disabled in the Vedvfile, it is only enabled on the image os.

# All instructions are evaluated in the Vedvfile, except:
# RUN, to send the command to the image os as it is.
# ENV, to send the variable to the image os as it is, with its quotes.
# (unescaped environment variables are expanded in RUN and ENV instructions too)

# Host os environment variables aren't available in the Vedvfile
# -------------
# Download the image from the registry and import it
FROM admin@alpine/alpine-3.17.3-x86_64
# Declare an environment variable
# image os evals `DEST=dest`
ENV DEST=dest
# Image os evals `GREETINGS='hello world'`
ENV GREETINGS='hello world'
# Set the shell
SHELL /bin/sh
# Copy all files from `src` to `dest`. `COPY src/* dest` doesn't work because
# globbing is disabled in the Vedvfile.
COPY src/ dest
# Copy as root user
COPY --root ./src ./dest
# Copy and change user and group of `dest` to vedv recursively
COPY --chown vedv:vedv src dest
# Copy `src` to `WORKDIR` as vedv user
COPY --user vedv src .
# Variable `DEST` is expanded in the Vedvfile
COPY . $DEST
# Run command as root user
RUN --root id
# Run command as vedv user
RUN --user vedv id
# Variable is expanded in the Vedvfile
# image os evals `echo "hello world"`
RUN echo "$GREETINGS"
# Variable is expanded in the image os, the output is the same as the previous
# command, image os evals `echo "$GREETINGS"`
RUN echo "\$GREETINGS"
# Variable is expanded in the Vedvfile
# image os evals `echo 'hello world'`
RUN echo '$GREETINGS'
# Change the system cpu cores and memory
# Never use this instruction at the end of the Vedvfile, because it poweroff
# the image and don't save the state, so a rebuild will take more time.
# It is a very time consuming instruction, to change cpu cores and memory,
# the image needs to be turned off, the instruction is executed, and the image
# is turned on again by the next instruction.
SYSTEM --cpus 2 --memory 512

Official Images

Transparency and security are very important to us, so all official images are created from the scratch, here are the steps:

The OS iso is downloaded from the official source and verified
A vm is created from the iso on Virtualbox and started
The vm is configured for vedv. e.g.: For alpine linux 3.17.3-x86_64 image configuration:
- 3.1. The specific CaC script icac/images/alpine-linux.vm.prod.cac is copied and executed in the vm.
- 3.2. The common linux CaC script icac/images/common-linux.vm.prod.cac is copied and executed in de the vm.
The vm is securely powered off and exported to an alpine.ova file from Virtualbox
The alpine.ova file is imported with the command: vedv image import -n alpine-3.17.3-x86_64 ./alpine.ova
The image is uploaded to the registry with the command: vedv image push admin@alpine/alpine-3.17.3-x86_64
The image is tagged as Official on registry web interface
The image is shared with the group public on registry web interface

We encourage you to read the CaC scripts to see what they do inside the vm.

Registry

The registry is a Nextcloud instance, you can host your own registry, Nextcloud is free and open source software.

The scripts for provision and configuration are located at icac/nextcloud/vultr.prod/nextcloud-aio.

If you want to host your own registry on Vultr you must have a vultr account (I am not associated with vultr), then follow the steps below:

Copy and edit the .env file, inside the .env look for the section icac/nextcloud/vultr

cp .env.sample .env
vim .env

Provision and Configure the registry

make registry-prod-setup

If you want to host your own registry on any other cloud provider, you can reuse the CaC script and write your IaC script for provisioning.

Use Cases

ydf

ydf is a dotfiles manager+ that uses vedv for developing.

ydf is the kind of tool that make changes to your system, install apps and write config files, so it needs to be tested in a secure, isolated and reproducible environment, to avoid damaging your system and to guarantee that the changes made by ydf are always reproducible on a clean system during testing. Many apps that are installed by ydf are made for a desktop environments, others apps rely on systemd, and others technologies that doesn't work in docker containers.

ydf is developed initially for Manjaro so the vedv image used is admin@manjaro/manjaro-gnome-22.1.3-x86_64

You should open and see the 4 files below available on ydf project to understand how to use vedv during development: Makefile, tools/ct-clean-exec, Vedvfile,.vedvfileignore

Start with the Makefile at: https://github.com/yunielrc/ydf/blob/master/Makefile

Good luck.

Contributing

Contributions, issues and feature requests are welcome!

Manjaro dev dependencies

# SYSTEM: Linux yuniel-pc 6.1.44-1-MANJARO #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed Aug  9 09:02:26 UTC 2023 x86_64 GNU/Linux
# YAY
make 4.4.1-2
davfs2 1.7.0-1
python-pre-commit 2.20.0-3
shfmt 3.7.0-1
shellcheck 0.9.0-45
nodejs 20.5.0-1
npm 9.8.1-1
bash-bats 1.9.0-1
bash-bats-assert-git 2.1.0-1
bash-bats-file 0.4.0-2
bash-bats-support-git 0.3.0-1
vultr-cli 2.17.0-1
# NPM
@commitlint/cli@17.7.1
@commitlint/config-conventional@17.7.0
commitizen@4.3.0
cz-conventional-changelog@3.3.0

Ubuntu dev dependencies

# SYSTEM: Linux user-MS-7D43 6.2.0-26-generic #26~22.04.1-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Jul 13 16:27:29 UTC 2 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
# APT
davfs2 1.6.1-1
make 4.3-4.1build1
pre-commit 2.17.0-1
# SNAP
node 18.17.1
shellcheck v0.9.0
shfmt 3.5.1
# NPM
@commitlint/cli@17.7.1
@commitlint/config-conventional@17.7.0
bats@1.10.0
commitizen@4.3.0
cz-conventional-changelog@3.3.0
# GITHUB
bats-support
bats-assert
bats-file
vultr-cli

Configure dev environment

Copy config samples

Execute the command below to copy config samples to the product root directory

cp .env.sample .env
cp .vedv.env.sample .vedv.env

Install dependencies

For Manjaro:

make OS=manjaro configure

For Ubuntu:

make OS=ubuntu configure

Setup registry development service

Execute the command below to provision and configure the registry development service on local machine

make registry-dev-setup

Workflow

Code

Write your code

Run Tests

⚠️ Before testing, Virtualbox can't have any virtual machines or hard disks otherwise, functional and integration tests that work with virtualbox will fail.

⚠️ Some functional and integration tests use OneDrive and Google Drive services, if any of these services fail, the test will fail too.

If functional and integration tests that work with virtualbox are failing, delete all virtual machines and hard disks from Virtualbox and delete the Virtualbox VMs directory usually located at ~/VirtualBox\ VMs and run the tests again.

Before testing, the registry development service must be started. Check the status with the command below.

make registry-dev-status

Start it if stopped

make registry-dev-start

Run Unit Testing for one component

make test-suite u="$(fd registry-service.bats)"
# 4.899s

Run Unit Testing for one function

make test-name n='::push_link\(\)' u="$(fd registry-service.bats)"
# 0.676s

Run Integration Testing for one function

make test-name n='download_file()' u="$(fd registry-nextcloud-api-client.i.bats)"
# 3.105s

Run Functional Testing for one function

make test-name n="vedv registry push[^-]" u="$(fd registry-command.f.bats)"
# 13.85s

Run All Unit Tests

make test-unit
# 1m 4.09s

Run All Integration Tests

make test-integration

Run All Functional Tests

make test-functional

Run All tests

On Manjaro

make OS=manjaro test-all
# 45m 12.79s

On Ubuntu

make OS=ubuntu test-all

Commit

This project uses Conventional Commits.

For commiting use the command below

make commit

Show your support

Give a ⭐️ if this project helped you!

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 338 Commits
.githooks		.githooks
.github		.github
.vscode		.vscode
dist		dist
doc/usr/share/man/man1		doc/usr/share/man/man1
icac		icac
media		media
tools		tools
.czrc		.czrc
.editorconfig		.editorconfig
.env.sample		.env.sample
.gitattributes		.gitattributes
.gitignore		.gitignore
.pre-commit-config.yaml		.pre-commit-config.yaml
.shellcheckrc		.shellcheckrc
.vedv.env.sample		.vedv.env.sample
CHANGELOG.md		CHANGELOG.md
LICENSE		LICENSE
Makefile		Makefile
README.md		README.md
README.md.tpl		README.md.tpl
commitlint.config.js		commitlint.config.js
install		install
packages-dev-manjaro.versions		packages-dev-manjaro.versions
packages-dev-ubuntu.versions		packages-dev-ubuntu.versions
packages-prod-manjaro.versions		packages-prod-manjaro.versions
packages-prod-ubuntu.versions		packages-prod-ubuntu.versions
packages.env		packages.env
uninstall		uninstall
version.txt		version.txt

License

yunielrc/vedv

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vedv

Table of Contents

About

Tested OS

Manjaro

Ubuntu

Install

From package manager

Install on Manjaro

From git repository

Install on Manjaro

Install on Ubuntu

Install on any other linux distribution

Configure

Create app password

Set the credentials

Usage

Start a container

Login to the container

Our Application

Getting our App

Building the App's Container Image

Updating the Source Code

Push the image to the registry

Share your image

Push an image link to the registry

Share on OneDrive

Push the image link to the registry

Share on Google Drive

Push the image link to the registry

Vedvfile instructions

Official Images

Registry

Use Cases

ydf

Contributing

Manjaro dev dependencies

Ubuntu dev dependencies

Configure dev environment

Copy config samples

Install dependencies

Setup registry development service

Workflow

Code

Run Tests

Commit

Show your support

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