We are looking for someone who would be willing to provide a build server for Lemmy’s continuous integration. This is used to ensure that new changes and pull requests pass all the checks, and that the code is written well. At the moment we are using a small VPS for this purpose (2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM). This works but is quite slow, and can slow down the development process with unnecessary waiting times.

For this reason we are looking for a community member with a spare server or computer, who would be willing to provide it as a build server. There are no specific hardware requirements, but the faster the better. The build server has to run 24/7 and run the Drone Docker Runner. The setup is very easy, especially if your machine is already running docker. If you have such a server and are willing to provide it, please comment below with the specs.

Additionally we are also looking for an ARM builder, so that we can provide official releases for this platform as well. Note that some Raspberry Pi models seem unable to build Lemmy (our 4GB memory builder failed), so please try if the compilation works on your device. If you can provide an ARM builder, also comment below with the specs.

    • nutomicOPMA
      2·
      2 years ago

      You can test it by installing Rust and running cargo install lemmy_server.

      • Jonny@lemmy.rimkus.it
        5·
        2 years ago

        is it ok to test it inside a docker image? as i use this machine for my gitlab instance as a runner from time to time, and like to keep the host system clean. In fact only docker and the gitlab-runner is currently installed.

        One thing I’ve forgotten, The Disk Space is not the biggest (therefore I always cleanup my used docker instances in my gitlab-ci build process):

        root@virusrockpro2:~# df -h
Dateisystem    Größe Benutzt Verf. Verw% Eingehängt auf
udev            1,9G       0  1,9G    0% /dev
tmpfs           387M     40M  347M   11% /run
/dev/mmcblk1p1  116G     32G   84G   28% /
tmpfs           1,9G       0  1,9G    0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5,0M    4,0K  5,0M    1% /run/lock
tmpfs           1,9G       0  1,9G    0% /tmp
/dev/zram1      146M     36M  100M   27% /var/log
tmpfs           387M     28K  387M    1% /run/user/1000

        will that be enough?

        • Jonny@lemmy.rimkus.it
          6·
          2 years ago

          I ran cargo install lemmy_server in the official Docker Image of Rust:

          • Memory Usage was ok (approx. 1,5 GB)
          • CPU Usage was at peak 100% of all Cores.
            load average: 6,15, 6,23, 5,84
          • The command finished in
            Finished release [optimized] target(s) in 35m 03s
            real    35m6.253s
user    179m50.287s
sys     4m23.684s
    • nutomicOPMA
      6·
      2 years ago

      Possible yes, but then we would be relying on a specific company (Microsoft) with no easy way to switch to another provider. And we would have to pay money to them if the free tier isnt enough. With drone.io we initially used their free cloud offering, and then seamlessly switched to a selfhosted instance. Now if we need more resources, any server can be used.

        • nutomicOPMA
          1·
          2 years ago

          Running checks on multiple services creates multiple points of failure, so if any one goes down, it takes time to investigate and fix that. So I dont see any benefit to this.

  • fit6529
    2·
    2 years ago

    Do you receive donations? If no, consider it. It will be simpler to buy what’s needed (vps, for example) yourselves.

    • nutomicOPMA
      2·
      2 years ago

      On this page you donation options. However renting a fast vps is generally very expensive, so selfhosting is much more cost effective. That needs some time and to setup and manage though. As we already host a number of different servers, it would be helpful if someone else could manage this one.