Updating buildpack-related gems in Cloud Foundry

Learn how to update your buildpack-packager and machete CF buildpack test framework, which are used for CF system buildpack development.

The buildpack-packager packages buildpacks and machete provides an integration test framework.

The CF Buildpacks team uses the gems-and-extensions pipeline to:

• Run integration tests for buildpack-packager and machete.
• Update the gems in the buildpacks managed by the team.

Running the update process

The following steps assume you are using a Concourse deployment of the buildpacks-ci pipelines.

At the end of the process, there is a new GitHub release. Updates are then applied to the buildpacks.

To update the version of either gem in a buildpack:

1. Verify that the test job <gemname>-specs for the gem was updated successfully and ran on the commit you plan to update.

2. Start the <gemname>-tag job to update (“bump”) the version of the gem.

   The <gemname>-release job starts and creates a new GitHub release of the gem.

3. Each of the buildpack pipelines, for example, the go-buildpack pipeline has a job that watches for new releases of the gem. When a new release is detected, the buildpack’s cf.Gemfile is updated to that release version.

4. The commit made to the buildpack’s cf.Gemfile starts the full integration test suite for that buildpack.

The final step starts all buildpack test suites simultaneously, and causes contention for available shared BOSH lite test environments.