Table of Contents

Setting up basic CI/CD for connector deployment

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a custom pipeline from scratch. This pipeline will establish basic quality control and automate the deployment of a DataMiner connector to a staging system through a CI/CD pipeline. This setup can function with or without the staging system being connected to dataminer.services. The tutorial uses a DataMiner Agent hosted on an internet-accessible virtual machine.

You can also apply the instructions in this tutorial (with limited syntax changes) to use other CI/CD technology, such as Jenkins, GitLab, Concourse, Azure DevOps, etc. You can find a quick overview of specific CI/CD tooling offered by Skyline Communications in our CI/CD documentation.

If you are interested in reusing Skyline's pre-made pipelines, which include quality-of-life features and a robust quality gate, refer to the From code to product tutorial.

Tip

See also:

Expected duration: 20 minutes.

Prerequisites

Overview

Step 1: Create your connector

  1. Open Visual Studio, and select Create a new project.

  2. Select DataMiner Connector Solution from the list of templates, and click Next.

  3. Enter a solution name, e.g. MyPipelineTest, and click Next.

  4. Enter the following information:

    1. Connector name: MyPipelineTest

    2. Provider name: MyFakeCompany

    3. Vendor name: MyFakeCompany

    4. Vendor OID: 1.3.6.1.4.1.8813.2.00

    5. Device OID: 0

    6. Integration ID: DMS-DRV-00

    7. Element type: kata

    8. Type of the first connection: virtual

    9. Author: MyName

  5. Click Create.

  6. In the protocol.xml file, go to the <Params> section, and add a visible parameter.

    1. Type <param and press Tab twice.

      This will add a new default visible parameter.

    2. Complete the snippet, filling in the ID, the name, the description, etc.

    3. At the top of the protocol.xml file, click the Validate button. You may need to click Sign in before the protocol.xml file is validated.

    4. Open the Display Editor by clicking the Display Editor button at the top of the protocol.xml file.

      1. Drag the new parameter from the Parameters pane on the right onto the General page in the Pages pane on the left.

      2. In the top-right corner of the Display Editor, click Apply Changes.

Step 2: Create a GitHub repository

  1. In the menu bar of Visual Studio, select GIT > Create GIT Repository.

  2. Create a new GitHub repository.

    Choose a name, specify your GitHub account, and mark yourself as the owner. When you have finished entering all information, click Create and Push.

  3. Go to the newly created GitHub repository on https://github.com/.

    Tip

    A trick in Visual Studio 2022 is to open the GIT menu and select GitHub/View Pull Requests. This will open the correct repository.

Step 3: Create a standard .NET GitHub Action

  1. On your GitHub page, go to the Actions tab, and select the Continuous integration/.NET starter workflow.

  2. Add the ability to trigger the workflow manually by adding workflow_dispatch: to the on: keyword in yml:

    on:
  push:
    branches: [ "master" ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ "master" ]
  workflow_dispatch:

  3. Commit your changes.

  4. Go to the Actions tab, and see the first run of your default .NET CI pipeline.

    The following will be performed:

    1. Compilation

    2. Unit testing

Note

This can also be created in another CI/CD technology of your choice.

Step 4: Extend the workflow with DataMiner Validator

  1. Go to the Actions tab.

  2. On the left, click your .NET workflow.

  3. At the top, click dotnet.yml.

  4. In the new window, click the pencil icon to edit the page.

  5. For clarity, change the job name build: to CI:

  6. Add new steps under the current steps:

    1. Install the Validators tool by adding a new job.

    2. Run the validator on your connector.

    3. Display the results and optionally perform quality gating activities.

      - name: Install Connector Validator
  run: dotnet tool install -g Skyline.DataMiner.CICD.Tools.Validator

- name: Run Connector Validator
  run: dataminer-validator validate-protocol-solution --solution-path "${{ github.workspace }}" --output-directory "${{ github.workspace }}" --output-file-name "validateResults" 

- name: Archive Results
  if: success()
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with:
    name: validateResults
    path: ${{ github.workspace }}/validateResults.json

- name: Quality Gate
  run: |
    json=$(cat "${{ github.workspace }}/validateResults.json")
    critical=$(echo "$json" | jq -r '.CriticalIssueCount')
    major=$(echo "$json" | jq -r '.MajorIssueCount')

    if [ "$critical" != "0" ] || [ "$major" != "0" ]; then
      echo "Error: CriticalIssueCount or MajorIssueCount is not 0"
      exit 1
    fi
    Tip

    For generic parts of a pipeline, like parsing JSON and making the quality gate, using an online LLM-based AI tool can help you save some time. For example, you can use a prompt like this:

    Using GitHub Workflows with an Ubuntu runner. I have a JSON file in the workspace with the path ${{ github.workspace }}/validateResults.json. I want two steps. 1 step where we upload that artifact, and a second step that retrieves the CriticalIssueCount and the MajorIssueCount and throws an error if one of them is higher than 0. I want you to return to me only the two steps. The name of step 2 should be Quality Gate.

  7. Commit your changes.

  8. Go to the Actions tab, and check the run of your enhanced pipeline.

    The following will be performed:

    1. Compilation
    2. Unit Testing
    3. DataMiner Connector Validator

Step 5: Extend the workflow with CD, automatic deployment

  1. Go to the Actions tab.

  2. On the left, click your .NET workflow.

  3. At the top, click dotnet.yml.

  4. In the new window, click the pencil icon to edit the page.

  5. Add a new job called CD running on a Windows image with new steps:

    1. Only run when the CI job is completed.

    2. Retrieve the source code.

    3. Install the Packager and Deployer tools.

    4. Run the packager to create a .dmprotocol package.

    5. Deploy the .dmprotocol package directly to an accessible DataMiner Agent.

    Important
    • Deployment with a local artifact requires running on a Windows OS. For more details, see this GitHub issue.
    • Deployment with a local artifact requires DataMiner 10.3.0/10.3.2 or higher.
    CD:

runs-on: windows-latest
needs: CI
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4

- name: Install Package Creation
  run: dotnet tool install -g Skyline.DataMiner.CICD.Tools.Packager
- name: Install DataMiner Deploy
  run: dotnet tool install -g Skyline.DataMiner.CICD.Tools.DataMinerDeploy
- name: Create Protocol Package
  run: dataminer-package-create dmprotocol "${{ github.workspace }}" --name  "protocol" --output "${{ github.workspace }}\\_PackageResults"
- name: Direct Agent Deployment
  run: dataminer-package-deploy from-artifact --path-to-artifact "${{ github.workspace }}\\_PackageResults\\protocol.dmprotocol" --dm-server-location "${{ secrets.SERVER_LOCATION }}" --dm-user "${{ secrets.DATAMINER_USER }}" --dm-password "${{ secrets.DATAMINER_PASSWORD }}"

  6. Commit your changes.

  7. Go to the Actions tab, and check the run of your enhanced pipeline.

    The following will be performed:

    1. Compilation

    2. Unit testing

    3. DataMiner connector validation

    4. Package creation

    5. Direct Agent deployment

Step 6: Add your GitHub secrets

  1. Go to the Settings tab.

  2. On the left, click Secrets and variables, and then click Actions.

  3. Add the following secrets (by clicking New repository secret, entering the name of the secret, and clicking Add secret):

    1. SERVER_LOCATION

    2. DATAMINER_USER

    3. DATAMINER_PASSWORD

Step 7: Enjoy the results

  1. Go to the Actions tab.

  2. On the left, select the .NET workflow.

  3. Click Run workflow.

You should now see your CI and CD jobs complete successfully.

Note

To be granted DevOps points, take a screenshot of this successful run and either send it to thunder@skyline.be or upload it via the Dojo tutorials page.

What to do next

Advanced options: CI

The Skyline Communications organization uses more than these actions. For enhanced CI, you can take a look at our reusable workflow.

These are some of the more interesting things you can find in our reusable workflows:

  • SonarCloud static analysis to our CI.

  • Ability to use our GitHub Organization private NuGet store (when added as external collaborator to the package source repository).

  • A development and release cycle workflow:

    • Tagging is considered a release cycle. This overrides the dmprotocol version with the tag.

    • A regular commit and push is considered a build cycle. This adds a _Bx suffix to the dmprotocol version (x being the run number of the pipeline).

  • Upload of a dmprotocol as a downloadable artifact in GitHub.

Advanced options: CD

The Skyline Communications organization provides starter workflows that run the reusable workflow for CI and then allow optional CD to be defined by the user. You can take a look at our starter workflow:

  • The CI reusable workflow is triggered as specified above.

  • Optionally, you can uncomment the code that deploys the .dmprotocol package.

Propose changes