While we aim to build out-of-the-box on recent distributions, this isn't always possible and not everyone runs a recent distribution. For this reason a version-controlled toolchain is provided as a docker image.

Obtaining the current toolchain

The toolchain is stored in a file called tools/toolchain/image. To access the toolchain, pull that image:

docker pull $(<tools/toolchain/image)

A helper script dbuild allows you to run command in that toolchain with the working directory mounted:

./tools/toolchain/dbuild ./configure.py
./tools/toolchain/dbuild ninja

You can adjust the docker run command by adding more flags before the command to be executed, separating the flags and the command with --. This can be useful to attach more volumes (for data or ccache) and to set environment variables:

./tools/toolchain/dbuild -v /var/cache/ccache:/var/cache/ccache -- ninja

Building the toolchain

Run the command

docker build -f tools/toolchain/Dockerfile .

and use the resulting image.

Publishing an image

If you're a maintainer, you can tag the image and push it using docker push. Tags follow the format scylladb/scylla-toolchain:fedora-29-[branch-3.0-]20181128. After the image is pushed, update tools/toolchain/image so new builds can use it automatically.

For master toolchains, the branch designation is omitted. In a branch, if there is a need to update a toolchain, the branch designation is added to the tag to avoid ambiguity.