Overview

Running a Windows buildbot differs from Linux a bit. So this document will give hints on the differences.

Create VM

To create a new Dockerfile and you do not have a local Windows machine, create a VM in the the cloud.

  • Use the latest Windows image with “Desktop experience” in the description.
  • Use something with at least 16 cores, to get reasonable build speed while testing your images.
  • Get 200GB of persistent SSD, this is much faster than the normal presistent storage.
  • In the “Cloud API access scopes” select “Read Write” for “Storage” to be able to upload docker images form the VM.

setup your workstation

For frequent access to your Windows VM it's conveneint to install Remmina, a remote desktop client for Linux, to connect the the Windows VM.

Configure the VM

  1. install Chocolately as package manager.
  2. Install your development tools, a good starting point is:
    choco install -y git vscode googlechrome arcanist vim
``
  3. Setup your github account and push access. Start “Git bash” and run ssh-keygen, upload your public key to Github.
  4. Setup your Phabricator account for arc diff.
  5. git clone ssh://git@github.com/llvm/llvm-zorg.git
  6. To install docker, run in an powershell with admin rights:
    Install-PackageProvider -Name NuGet -Force
Install-Module -Name DockerMsftProvider -Repository PSGallery -Force
Install-Package -Name docker -ProviderName DockerMsftProvider -Force
sc.exe config docker start=delayed-auto
    Then reboot your VM to start the Docker service.
  7. Maybe disable Windows Defender anti vrius “realtime protection” to get better IO performance.
  8. Install Google Cloud SDK. Installing via chocolately is sometimes broken. Then run gcloud auth login and gcloud auth configure-docker to be able to push images to the registry.
  9. Create a file token somewhere and store your worker password there. You will need this to test your worker locally.

General Hints

Get ideas from LLVM premerge-checks

Premerge-testing is also running LLVM builds on Windows. You might be able to get some ideas from there.

Bash on Windows

Git on Windows includes a bash. Right-click the Start menu und launch a “Windows Powershell (Admin)” (with admin rights, as docker requires that) and run bash from there. Then you should be able to use the helper scripts (e.g. build_run.sh) on Windows as well.

Resource Usage

If Windows seems stuck, use the Resource Monitor to check what the processes are doing. If you need even more insight, e.g. debugging builds or test, use the Process Explorer (choco install procexp) to figure out what's going on.

Windows base image with Visual Studio 2019

Reuse the windows-base-vscode2019 image, it contains everything you need to build and test with Visual Studio 2019.