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The Android/Linux/Docker environment

Hardware⚓

We're still experimenting with new VM providers and VM configurations, but in general, what you can expect:

  • at least 7.5GB RAM
  • at least 2 CPU cores
  • 64 bit CPU
  • at least 10GB free disk space

Environment⚓

We use standard Docker images, published on Docker Hub, and the related Dockerfile (the description file which describes the docker image / environment, and which is directly used to build the image) can be found on GitHub.

Right now we have three docker images, built on top of each other:

  1. Bitrise Base image ( GitHub / Docker Hub )
  2. Base Android image ( GitHub / Docker Hub )
    • extends the Bitrise Base image with Android specific tools and environments.
    • Multiple Android SDK, Build Tool and system image versions are preinstalled, as well as gradle and maven.
    • You can use the $ANDROID_HOME environment variable to point to the location of the pre-installed Android SDK
    • Related Dockerfile where you can see what's preinstalled in this image: https://github.com/bitrise-docker/android/blob/master/Dockerfile
  3. Android NDK image ( GitHub / Docker Hub )
    • built on the Base Android image, extends it with the latest Android NDK.
    • You can use the $ANDROID_NDK_HOME environment variable to point to the location of the preinstalled Android NDK, and it's also added to $PATH
    • Related Dockerfile where you can see what's preinstalled in this image: https://github.com/bitrise-docker/android-ndk/blob/master/Dockerfile

You can find the pre-installed tools & System Report of this Stack at: https://github.com/bitrise-io/bitrise.io/blob/master/system_reports/linux-docker-android.log

Docker & Virtual Machines⚓

Every build runs in a new VM (which is destroyed right after the build), not just in a new container! This allows us to grant you full control over Docker and the whole environment.

When your build starts on the Docker based Stack we volume mount the /var/run/docker.sock socket into your container (similar to calling docker run -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock ...; you can find a description about this access granting method at: https://jpetazzo.github.io/2015/09/03/do-not-use-docker-in-docker-for-ci/). Note: The docker binary have to be installed inside the base Docker image (we install Docker in every one of our Docker images so that you don't have to do anything if you use our image, or you base your own image on our Docker images), because docker started to migrate from a single-binary solution to dynamically loaded components, and simply sharing the docker binary is not sufficient anymore.

This means that you have access to docker in your container, and can use other tools which use docker, like docker-compose. You can, for example, configure and run tests and other automations on website projects using docker-compose.

You can call docker info, docker build, docker run, docker login, docker push, etc. exactly how you would on your own machine.

Shared volumes⚓

Warning

Important Note if you want to run docker in your build, and share volumes: because of how docker handles volume sharing, only those volumes can be shared which are shared with the base docker container (the one your build is running in). Everything under /bitrise can be mounted as a volume, but no other path is guaranteed to work with --volume mapping.

Practically this means that if you use the standard paths and you use relative paths to mount volumes it'll work as expected, as the default source code directory is located inside /bitrise (by default it's /bitrise/src in our Docker images). What won't work is if you change the source code directory to be located outside of /bitrise, or you want to mount a folder with an absolute path outside of /bitrise.