Okay, so today I’m gonna spill the beans on my little experiment: “travis hunter dad.” Yeah, sounds weird, but stick with me. I’m talking about setting up something kinda like Travis CI but for a personal project where I was essentially acting as the “dad” – building, testing, and making sure everything was running smoothly.
It all started when I had this side project – a simple Python script that automates some tedious tasks. At first, I was just running it manually, but that got old real quick. I wanted something more… automated. Something that would yell at me (figuratively, of course) if I broke something.
First thing I did was grab a Raspberry Pi. I had one lying around, and it seemed like the perfect little server for this. I installed Linux on it – a basic Debian distro. Nothing fancy.
Then came the fun part: setting up the CI/CD pipeline. I figured Git would be my source control. I created a repo on GitHub. Then, I installed Jenkins on the Raspberry Pi. Jenkins is kinda overkill for a tiny project like this, but hey, it’s what I knew.
Next, I configured Jenkins to listen to my GitHub repo. I set up a webhook so that whenever I pushed changes, Jenkins would automatically start a build. I fumbled around with the Jenkins configuration for a good hour, trying to get the credentials right and figure out the correct Git URL. Lots of trial and error involved.
After that, I wrote a simple build script. It basically just pulled the latest code from Git, ran some basic unit tests (I had to actually write those first, oops!), and then deployed the script to its final location. The tests were super basic – making sure the script didn’t crash and that it produced the expected output for a few simple cases. Nothing too comprehensive, but better than nothing.
The deployment was just a matter of copying the script and a few configuration files to a specific directory on the Raspberry Pi. I used `scp` for that. Simple but effective.
Of course, nothing worked the first time. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon debugging various issues. Turns out, I had forgotten to install some dependencies on the Raspberry Pi. Another classic mistake. After installing those, things started to look better.
Finally, after a few more tweaks and adjustments, I had a working CI/CD pipeline. I pushed a small change to my script, and Jenkins automatically kicked off a build, ran the tests, and deployed the updated script. It was glorious! I felt like a proud “travis hunter dad.”
Okay, it wasn’t perfect. The build times were a bit slow, and the Raspberry Pi was probably overkill for this. But it worked. And it taught me a lot about CI/CD, even on a small scale.
Here’s a quick rundown of what I used:
- Raspberry Pi (for the server)
- Debian Linux
- Git/GitHub (for source control)
- Jenkins (for CI/CD)
- Python (for the script)
Lessons learned:
- Even small projects can benefit from CI/CD.
- Jenkins can be a bit of a pain to configure, but it’s powerful.
- Always remember to install your dependencies!
I’m still tweaking and improving the setup. I’m thinking about adding some more sophisticated tests and maybe even automating the deployment process further. But for now, I’m happy with my little “travis hunter dad” setup.
