Codefresh Hub for Argo

Share and Reuse Your Argo Workflows with the Codefresh Argo Hub.

Motivation

Anyone who builds many Argo workflows knows that after a while you end up reusing the same basic steps over and over again. While Argo Workflows has a great mechanism to prevent repetitive work using templates, these templates remain in private user repositories that have not been shared with the broader community.

Goals

• Allow people to easily find useful steps and flows and build even more awesome workflows
• Provide the confidence that a template is safe for use
• Enable all organizations to share their templates with the community
• Help the Argo community grow faster through knowledge reuse

Table of Contents

• Main features
• Installation and Usage
• How to Contribute
• Ask for a new Workflow

Main Features

• Extensive UI for visualization and navigation
• WorkflowTemplate and inner template breakdown
• WorkflowTemplate manifest conventions
• Hub file system Structure
• Versioning
• Full release life cycle
• Automatic image building and security scanning
• Pods security
• Easily write custom scripts with your favorite language

Extensive UI for visualization and navigation

Get a full-featured visualized experience here https://codefresh.io/argo/hub/

WorkflowTemplate manifest conventions

• Every workflow template has a name that follows the convention: argo-hub.{NAME}.{VERSION}
• Every template within the workflowTemplate must reference the service account that is declared in the rbac.yaml manifest

To build an extensive UI while still using use of the original Kubernetes manifest, we are leverging annotations.

WorkflowTemplate annotations

• argo-hub/version - sem version (0.0.2)
• argo-hub/description - description to be shown
• argo-hub/license - license (MIT)
• argo-hub/owner_name - github user name to appear in the site
• argo-hub/owner_email - email for contact
• argo-hub/owner_avatar - github user avatar icon
• argo-hub/owner_url - github user profile
• argo-hub/categories - categories to appear in the site
• argo-hub/icon_url - svg (only) icon
• argo-hub/icon_background - background color for the icon

Inner template annotations

• argo-hub-template/description - description for specific template
• argo-hub-template/icon_url - icon for specific template
• argo-hub-template/icon_background - background for icon

Hub file system Structure

The main folder of the Argo Hub repository is workflows
Each folder represents a workflowTemplate (group of templates), and appears as a unique item in the main list of the argo hub site

• The file names are important, and it is important to follow the file naming conventions defined.

Every workflowTemplate folder has the following structure and files:

• CHANGELOG.md - a shared changelog md file between all the versions
• assets folder - where you can store the icons to reference from within the workflowTemplate
• versions folder - contains all supported versions

Every version folder has the following structure and files:

• workflowTemplate.yaml - the main manifest that follows the conventions
• rbac.yaml - a single file with 3 required manifests that provides the permissions for workflow template
• images folder - each sub-folder results in a docker build according to the inner Dockerfile, and is automatically built scanned and pushed to argo-hub registry: quay.io/codefreshplugins/argo-hub-workflows-{NAME}-versions-${VERSION}-${IMAGE_FOLDER_NAME}:main
• docs folder - contains documentation for every template within the workflowTemplate (name be identical to the template name)

Versioning

Each workflow template is versioned and can be referenced by specific versions. The Codefresh Hub provides a clear structure for both owners and consumers to pick and use the versions that make sense for their use cases. Users can also use multiple versions to test changes, without fully upgrading. Check out the file system structure, and the workflow template conventions.

Full release life cycle

A full release life cycle has been built to do the following:

• validate that the changes adhere to the conventions (coming soon, for now manually by reviewer)
• build all images defined in the image folder (#Automatic-image-building-and-security-scanning)
• scan the built images
• push the images into public quay registry

Automatic image building and security scanning

Workflow tasks often involve complex scripts with dependencies that have to be installed manually, wasting valuable execution time and complexing the workflow.
Many developers overcome this complexity by building a Docker image that contains all required dependencies (i.e npm install), plus the scripts themselves.
The usual problem that developers will notice is that the work on the workflowTemplate itself is detached from the release life cycle and development of the Docker image.
Argo Hub solves this issue by taking a modern approach, and maintaining all required dependencies and scripts alongside the workflowTemplate, and Argo Hub doing all the heavy lifting for you with its release life cycle.

Pods security

Templates in the hub must specify their required permissions, which are then enforced within Kubernetes. Using default permissions is considered an anti-pattern for workflow templates and they are not supported out of the box. Defining clear permissions creates a clear contract between consumers and their templates.

Installation and Usage

Eventually Argo Hub is simple, being a set of reusable Kubernetes manifests (workflowTemplates and RBAC related resources).
There are different ways to be able to consume the workflowTemplates:

• Applying a workflow template directly to your Kubernetes cluster just use kubectl apply -f {file} and apply a specific filer or folder

• Using Argo CD you can easily get the entire argo hub by getting it automatically applied to your cluster using the GitOps approach.
  

Using Argo CD application set with following config file

{
  "appName": "marketplace-git-source",
  "userGivenName": "marketplace-git-source",
  "destNamespace": "codefresh-v2-production",
  "destServer": "https://kubernetes.default.svc",
  "srcPath": ".",
  "srcRepoURL": "https://github.com/codefresh-io/argo-hub.git",
  "srcTargetRevision": "",
  "labels": { "codefresh_io_entity": "git-source" },
  "exclude": "**/images/**/*",
  "include": "workflows/**/*.yaml"
}

How to Contribute

The easiest way to contribute is by writing a new workflow or enhancing an existing workflowTemplate by adding additional tasks (templates).
First thing to do is to fork the repository.

Writing a new Workflow

1. Copy the utils/starting-template folder into the main workflows folder.
2. Globally replace the words starting-template and starting template with your workflowTemplate name.
3. Open a pull request and wait for a review.
   
4. Once approved you'll immediately see your changes in the Argo Hub site

Enhancing existing workflows

1. Pick an existing workflowTemplate, and follow the conventions and the file system structure.
   
2. Open a pull request and wait for a review.
   
3. Once approved you'll immediately see your changes in the Argo Hub site.

Ask for a new Workflow

Please fill a github issue or thumb up an existing one