Designing an open-source CI tool to simplify GitOps with Spinnaker

The challenge

Creating complex CI scenarios in Spinnaker took time and human effort. A GitOps workflow needed Spinnaker resources kept as code, with shared parts reusable across pipelines, changes reviewed and tested before they apply, a tracked history and an easy way to revert, across every Spinnaker version.

What was at risk:

• Slow pipeline creation and human effort spent on every complex CI scenario

What we did

• Provided expertise in DevOps, automation and deploying CI/CD pipelines.
• Created the core functionality of Floodgate.
• Created a rendering mechanism enabling the use of Jsonnet with external libraries.
• Applied the configuration-as-code approach, making Spinnaker-as-a-Code a reality.
• Open-sourced the code on GitHub (github.com/codilime/floodgate).
• Moderated the Floodgate code repository.

How it works

Floodgate keeps Spinnaker resources as Jsonnet code and applies them through a GitOps workflow, in three parts.

1. Rendering A rendering mechanism enables the use of Jsonnet with external libraries, such as Sponnet.
2. Resources in Jsonnet Shared parts of pipelines work as a reusable library, public pipeline libraries like Sponnet plug in, and a resource dependencies graph orders the resources.
3. Configuration as code CI pipelines test changes in pipelines and templated pipelines, configuration changes are reviewed, history is tracked, and a revert is easy.