GitHub GitHub Satellite 2020 - Work, 7 May 2020

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From YouTube: Save precious time with GitHub Actions - GitHub Satellite 2020

Description

Presented by Luca Cipriani, CIO, Arduino

The process of taking software from the development stage through testing and into production can be labor-intensive, expensive, and most of all, time consuming. Whether you're a hobbyist, an open source maintainer, or an organization, the single truth remains: We can’t buy time. Success is often determined by how efficiently we are using our time. In order to increase our efficiencies, we turned to GitHub Actions to automate our workflows for both the software and hardware we produce. We are now able to reprogram our Arduino board, test the input/output of the hardware, and then send the results back to GitHub Actions. We can completely automate not just a continuous integration of the software but also of the hardware using solely online tools. In this talk, we'll run through the workflows Arduino has implemented with GitHub Actions and show attendees ways that they can take the first steps into bringing GitHub Actions into their development cycle.

GitHub Satellite: A community connected by code

On May 6th, we threw a free virtual event featuring developers working together on the world’s software, announcements from the GitHub team, and inspiring performances by artists who code.

More information: https://githubsatellite.com
Schedule: https://githubsatellite.com/schedule/

A

I've got a fantastic session coming up now. Dana really excited about this one. So this one's coming from the legend Lucca Kapoor Yanni who's from joining us from Arduino. So yeah it's going to be talking to us about how to save precious time with give up actions. So, let's without further ado, let's head straight in and go talk to Lucas Lucas coming up next, let's go now.

B

You know everyone I'm Lu can see. Are you at Arduino I'm here with every Porter, and they get up octopus? Our mascot of the way here so today, I'm going to spend some time to explain you how to save time with get up action, and now we use them at Arduino.

B

So it's going to be an overview of before I will start with explaining you what Arduino is doing with open source more in general share some data with you and WZ also tell you the story and the idea we got after we are seeing that the get up action were available and then we are using them in the daily activities and also what we plan for the future so are doing, obviously is very popular for the boards and the electronics, but actually became popular for two main different reason. One is the software behind that.

B

But more importantly, is the community of people that are continuously contributing or together and helping us in delivering a lot more examples. Tutorials for newcomers, but also professional people started inventing within so that came out of a lot of I. Don't know the 3d printers drones and many other things, and as of now, people also in the industries are using Arduino for daily activities, and this is whole happening in the open-source ecosystem.

B

So obviously get up is a big part of it as well, and so we are not just an electronic company but more like an open-source platform for everyone to give you some numbers. There are really millions of people more than 20 minutes from here that use our own IDE, which is obviously open, source, congedo and also hundred thousand peoples that are using currently our new Arduino command line tool. That is something I'm gonna to speak about later today, but more injera is a open source contributor. We continues.

B

We developed more than 250 public repositories on our account, which is quite interesting, because our company is not really huge, but this is coming out, especially from the contributors and external contributors and obviously we draw and we maintain the eye security and quality standards of the code.

B

So the different components that are really famous are mobile screen. Okay, so we were using github action and before using github action, we were using different tools, wildly popular tools, really I think everyone knows them and they are good for doing CI and CD. But what is really hard? It is maintaining them and for, as I said, we are not super big corporate. Maintaining tools, he's really a pain and also sometimes it can lend to have I, don't know all dated software.

B

It sound secure the implication and can give us some issues, so I think it was two years ago in 2018 and probably in October. So it was a kid up really launched those new key dub actions, so I was pretty excited about it because it was an online event and it became a private, better, I think and I say. Okay. This is really interesting because it's going to change not just how CI CD works, but more in general. How do you develop something?

B

Because he's really tours also my my culture, which is really the observable oriented? This is mixing up a bit having the developers feel confident also to run their own pipeline for continuous integration, also to deploy directly on stage or to release something online publicly available. So this is really interesting for for everybody.

B

So when really not Friedman elucidate is a okay. This is America a completely new idea and changing the basis, but not just for technical reason, but mainly because of the get up community, because every new, interesting technology that is being figured up by the leader community is going to be the standard for a new generation of developers, and this is extremely important for us. So it's not just a matter of technology but a matter of people.

B

So that's what really gave us a new interesting view about continuous integration, continuous development and deployment and a lot of different things we're gonna see, but now there is really our own challenge. The Arduino challenge is not about just testing the software, but also about testing the artwork and I. My background is really in the software industry and then, when I joined, Arduino I started playing with these boards. So you know they are really tiny and there is some something physical and tangible.

B

You have to wait interrupts, so you can't retry to may time something because maybe it could electronically break. So you need to be extremely careful and also you want to orchestrate all those tests on physical Hardware externally by some software. So there is a tight interaction between Arbour and software. This is extremely challenging because we do have a set a lot of libraries directly created by us so more than 90s, but there are out dart, really thousands of libraries created by the community and you want to run tests on top of them.

B

You want to check compatibility with different kind of ports want to at the community in having high standards, and you can also suggest some good libraries across others, so testing. Everything obviously is a complex text and it's not finished yet, but this tool is really helping us in achieving that. The same applies with integration tests, so not just a unit test internally for the library, but.

A

B

Understand if they are working across many different platform, adjust platform in the sense of Arduino, so really microcontrollers, but also the tools that we use like HR, ideally, the common line tool and many other they work on Mac on Linux or Windows, really on a ton of different machines. We use the go programming language and they also have to run on x86 or our machines. And you know all those different combination have to work all together, because millions of people are using those products and in libraries you have to guarantee that they are gonna work.

B

Always let's say we started. We were really confident about because it was an internally new project. Our Arduino command line tool is a tool that allows you to program on Arduino board directly from the command line, so it's pretty nice for developers, obviously, and for professionals.

B

We had to test the Arduino CLI itself, so we started writing some go tests and then we had to rub them every time we created a new request, so we started creating a key table action because was really easy to start with, and then, if we made mistake, wasn't really a big deal, because we didn't need a separate team, like collaboration team, to set up a new server with some CI tool on it and so forth.

B

We were just experimenting with it, see how it was and then eventually decide, and we decided to beat this technology because from starting a prototype to actually having those functional tests in production was really a few clicks away and writing a young file so extremely easy or any kind of professional developers, and the other big thing was.

B

It was announced a bit later, but github action allows you to run your own self, hosted runners on any kind of hardware. You want included arm and obviously raspberry run. haha So we decided to experiment a bit with it and because they come online tool already runs on her. You can magically attach a lot of different boards on, on a raspberry run, the heat up action, self-hosted runner inside the raspberry beam and use that to test the arbor connected to it, which is really something Eddy completely new today to the industry.

B

So this is our test. Rick is still under development, but, as you can see, there is an LCD display that he was the output of the test and also the risk physical equipment and, as I said, the complexity is the interaction between the software and the physical system. There are those pogo pins that physically connect with the electronics of the hardware.

B

As you can see, this is the the board, so it's really really connected physically to those pin, and then we can, thanks to an FPGA board, understand what's going on at electronical level and then put all those reports in as an output of the kit of action.

B

So this this is and one of those boards. So this is an example, and the interesting thing is that, for us, the guild of action is kind of gluing. Everything together so is hiding the complexity, which is also one of the main goal of Arduino.

B

That means we all know nervous to be to understand what they are or they are doing, but at the same time we let professional to save a ton of time and that's another main goal for us so for arguing ortley what we did as you can see, there is I give up directory. Then we also started creating new release.

B

So we we started with the test and now we said: ok, we can even release the CLI with by using github action, so everything is open source and you can check it out, but this is the way on how we release new command line tool, really every two weeks or so to the general public audience. While we are doing that because Allah has not to do every task automatically, but it alo has to spot issues immediately and that's a matter of thing for us, because the beginning is extremely important.

B

I say there are many pieces going on together. So spotting errors is crucial for us because we save us a lot of time. You can really filter everything for I know: failure status, you can click on the interface immediately get what's going on and also understand what is the last line that has been brown and failed, and eventually you decide what is going to be the strategy about that. So this is extremely not just useful but really saving time for us.

B

So once we did that on this project, obviously the developer started to be extremely excited about that, and they wanted to use it pretty much everywhere. So we had in the same project we needed to create a documentation for the command line tool and we say: ok, why don't we set up another github action to automatically generate the documentation coming from the source code and from other resources? That's what we did.

B

It was pretty linear, so we started doing that, and the output of this G Direction is this beautiful website that is again running on Arduino dot GW. What's the main advantage? Is that really a low has to not having an infraction like registering onion, setting up a new server before going online? We are, we are still. We are a fast startup kind of company, even if we exist in the last many years, I think were less 14 years or so, and we still act as a start-up.

B

So the interesting thing is that this allow us to quickly have a prototype, put it in production and now at least the users have the proper documentation that is automatically updated. It's extremely important because Arduino is really a user facing company and our community is also our users and our customers at the same time. So we want to deliver very fast and daily, and this is perfect for us.

B

So once obviously people started writing more and more code, then our developer became kind of enthusiastic, inhuman, crazy about github action. So we started having our own key direction, which is again interesting because now, if you want to test your own artwork, that is Arduino compatible, you can use the Arduino CLI as a github action. So you can include the Arduino CLI itself as a github action, and and so we are enriching the ecosystem and we are letting other people create on top of it.

B

So it's again a community and open-source goal all together, but also raising the bar of the quality for the industry as well, so I think I got you a pretty good overview of all the tools and they set up that is needed for for running a CLI past project. I will speak about this with closed source, but just because it is an internal project, but would like to show you, even if it is this internal, what are the full capabilities of the key direction, and now we leverage them.

B

The nice thing is there is not just for continuous integration in contains delivery, but you can do a lot more like in those action that I'm going to show you right now we set up an entire new kubernetes cluster by using a github action, we can deploy a new staging environment to developer environment with just single click, and there are just a few yum file with with some recipe in it, and everyone in the company can understand it. That's another big goal so because we are going to align to this strategy.

B

Everyone in the company, if these are front-end developer, became developer or a free, more engineer, it doesn't matter. We are going to use the same tool. You are share across the company, so we have easily action to turn down out the vermin environment and create a new cluster or just run tests on a specific application, or even tagging and Lebanon the pull request and Ankita Bishop, which is extremely interesting for a company that is mainly doing an open source. Obviously, so I hope that you understood a bit more.

B

Our github action work, but I also hope that you just don't trust only myself by you give it a try alone and for yourself and because you can't damage anything, is everything lost it just configure everything. There is also a nice UI interface. You click you test it and that's it I invite you also to ask me any question in the question and answer session and I want to. Thank you all of you. Thanks.

C

Fascinating actions is really easy. You know if you.

C

C

Self-Hosted, runners and being able to you know in parallel, go and run all of your actions for your CICP pipeline. It's just awesome, it's just awesome, but Martin. um You know what did you like.

A

I'm, a big fan of Arduino, as you know, Dana, and then anything IOT and all that sort of okay I just want to show you this yeah Bridge, you know I dug, is that one of the original you know very long time ago, yeah and what's fantastic is the just the way that everything is open-source, all the designs. Everything- and, in fact you know all your actions were open source as well. That's just phenomenal when people want to figure out how you've done this stuff.

A

Like that hardware in the loop testing, you were doing that just blew my mind, so was that working with so that was calling down running a self-hosted runner locally. It was talking back up to actions in the cloud and then that's how it was able to talk to the devices. Is that how that works? Yeah.

B

Actually is running in the factory, so in the factory this there is this district with the raspberry meat. So you can flash a program every single board, because we test every single port before going online and so yeah. That is incredible, because it's really allow us to have some kind of mix to the environment.

B

Obviously, once you start working lightly with the hardware initially, if you are coming from a web background, it fits this range now, because you know there is physical hardware and you can trigger it, and but also it feels really empowering, because you are changing the the physics of in the bits for real, not just on our virtual environment as.

A

Fantastic, so, as you mentioned, you're gonna be in the discussions area and you're gonna be I'm, taking Q&A from the audience.

A

We've got some questions in already, so if it's okay with you just want to take you through a couple, so we've got the first one here, and this is related just what we were talking about actually is from tinny. M-Lok are I, think that is anyway, whoa. No, no apologies for butchering your handle bear whatever yeah.

C

A

C

A

The so they wanted to know can can you use actions then to push the code to the Arduino device, and how do you do that? How does that work? People more people want to understand this hardware in the loop stuff. Yes,.

B

That's the nice thing, because the Arduino CLI is not just a CLI in the let's say classical sense, but what is really nobody vote about it?

B

It is not going to be pretty technical here, but I think everyone here is probably a developer, so it has a GRDC interface on top of it, so you can interact with it also by using basically WebSocket or kind of a GDP like interface and simplifying a bit, but but yes- and you also can use the CLI so our own- let's say official action your pipeline, so you can create your own action hold this yell I, have your own environment and the directly upload your sketch or your board. So yes, it's absolutely possible.

A

Contrasting Dana is there any other questions.

C

Well, I just wanted to know DD's github actions in other projects and teams. um You know how widespread has this adoption been? It aren't we now.

B

Absolutely stunning, because really this week was the content and marketing team started using the github actions to publish new tutorials on our public website, because we use we are used to create statically copy of our website and publish it on some kind of Cydia. So they started themselves by using a new direction and they are really able to at least have a POC completely working on get up. And that's it.

C

Wow, that is awesome.

B

So you heard it.

A

Here from Lucca.

C

Open-Source products coming from Arduino we're excited, you know, Martin's a huge fan, but yeah I want to thank even just a reminder. Lucca will be available for the next 30 minutes doing more Q&A in our discussions you can hit him up at get loves. Github satellite comm, slash discussions so yeah, so Martin I thought I've been seeing. You take a look at your phone a couple of times if you took and Twitter why we've been streaming. Oh.

A

Okay, well, that's so before we get into that, let's say goodbye to Lucas! Oh hey! Luca, we'll see you later.

C