Publication Details
A Self-Hosted Approach to Automatic CI/CD Using Open-Source Tools on Low-power Devices
Zaklová Kristýna, Ing. (DFIT-ISD)
Lazúr Juraj, Ing. (DIFS)
Hynek Jiří, Ing., Ph.D. (DIFS)
Hruška Tomáš, prof. Ing., CSc. (DIFS)
Docker, CI/CD, Continuous Deployment, Raspberry Pi
The process of software development has widely adopted Continuous Integration and
delivery (CI/CD), offering a comprehensive approach to streamlining the
development process. Both features are commonly offered by third-party services
or cloud-hosted environments, like Amazon AWS or GitHub. While these offerings
are widely available and perfect for large projects and companies, they may not
be suitable for smaller projects. Factors like the desire to maintain code and
deployment locally or cost considerations can drive the search for alternative
solutions. This paper presents an infrastructure mostly based on open-source
services that address these specific needs. It is suitable for both development
and the automatic deployment of small, locally deployed projects. The solution
underwent six months of testing in a lab environment on a low-power device,
namely the Raspberry Pi 4B, which was used to both build new versions of the
software and host it. The solution leverages the GitHub self-hosted runner to
build Docker images from the code directly on the target device. The images are
then pushed into a local Docker Registry. This ensures that the code can be used
on multiple architectures, namely the arm64, and amd64, by simply pulling an
appropriate image that is cross-built thanks to Docker buildx. The built images
can then be automatically updated to deploy or be deployed on different hardware.
The solution is suitable for small projects or teams with constrained budgets
thanks to the self-hosting of all the components, the low purchase price, and the
power efficiency of low-power devices like the Raspberry Pi.
@inproceedings{BUT193353,
author="Petr {John} and Kristýna {Zaklová} and Juraj {Lazúr} and Jiří {Hynek} and Tomáš {Hruška}",
title="A Self-Hosted Approach to Automatic CI/CD Using Open-Source Tools on Low-power Devices",
booktitle="2024 IEEE 17th International Scientific Conference on Informatics",
year="2024",
pages="105--112",
publisher="Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers",
address="Poprad",
isbn="979-8-3503-8767-4",
url="https://www.fit.vut.cz/research/publication/13274/"
}