This document describes the lab build process.
- There exists a git repository for the lab.
- The lab repository is available on the machine that runs this script.
- The lab repository has a remote (usually on https://github.com/virtual-labs/)
- The lab repository has a
masterbranch. - There exists a
lab-descriptor.jsonin the lab repository. - Experiment repositories (and tags) exist and follow the provided experiment template.
- Template
- The template html file that defines the common skeleton for all pages.
- Config
- This contains information about which pages are generated using which templates.
- Lab Descriptor
- This is a json document that contains all the lab related data. This should be present in the lab repository, on the master branch.
- Page Templates
- Each page in the lab is generated using the
top level skeleton and a page specific
template. The data for the page specific
template comes from the lab descriptor. All
the page templates are placed in a directory
called
page-templates.
The components are generated using templates. Templates are found in the page-templates directory.
The page-templates directory contains handlebarsjs templates.
Each of these templates is one of two types:
- Page Specific Template
- Page specific templates are defined for components that are required in a single page.
- Common Template
- Common Templates are used to generate components like headers, footers etc. that are placed in each page.
The IIITH lab pages are similar to all other lab pages, except for the List of Experiments Page. The list of experiments page has different template for the two types of experiments.
- Template for IIITH Labs
- nested-list-of-experiments-ctnt.handlebars
- Template for Other Labs
- list-of-experiments-ctnt.handlebars
As the templates are different, the data also comes from different fields in the lab-descriptor.
- IIITH Lab List of Experiments Field
experiments- Other Lab List of Experiments Field
nested-experiments
Only one of these fields should be present in a lab-descriptor.
NOTE: If both fields are present, the lab pages will not be generated.
Once the pages are generated (generated pages are present in
page-components) the lab is generated using the following:
- Page Components
- Page Components are the html pages generated using the data and templates.
- assets
- the css, js, images and fonts are taken from
templates/assetsdirectory.
After the lab pages are built, the experiments need to built and staged.
If the build and staging process of experiments is successful, we move on to the process of staging the lab.
Here we basically just copy the contents of the build directory
from the labpath to the staging location, which is a directory on
the server.
If the staging of experiments and lab sources succeeds the last step is to place the lab sources and the experiments to their final location on the server.
NOTE: We assume that is process is not prone to any known errors.
After each successful lab generation and deployment process, the lab sources are pushed to its repository along with the timestamp in its commit message.
A new release of the sources is made by incrementing the previous release number. The numbering scheme follows semantic versioning. The type of release determines the version number.
Every release follows the scheme : v<X>.<Y>.<Z>. Where X, Y, and
Z are non-negative integers.
Types of releases:
- Major
- X is incremented and Y, Z become 0.
- Minor
- X stays the same. Y is incremented and Z becomes 0.
- Patch
- X and Y remain the same. Z is incremented.
The timestamp, verion number and status (success or failure) of the run is updated to a google sheet.
The lab descriptor is validated using a schema. If anything is invalid in the lab descriptor, the error is displayed and process aborts.