CDE FAQ and Troubleshooting Guide

A Cloud Droid Environment is a containerized development environment that allows Factory’s Droids to run tests, linters, and other tools in a controlled, cloud-based setting. It’s designed to mirror your local development environment, ensuring that Droids have access to the same tools and configurations as your developers.

You need two main files:

1. .droid.yaml: Configures Droid behavior and specifies commands for running tests and linters.
2. devcontainer.json: Defines the development container configuration, including the base image, dependencies, and startup commands.

Setting up a CDE typically takes:

• .droid.yaml: About 5-10 minutes
• devcontainer.json: Approximately 2-3 hours, depending on the complexity of your development environment

No, you don’t need to use VS Code. While the devcontainer format is often associated with VS Code, the core functionality of a CDE is independent of any specific IDE. The most important aspect is properly containerizing your application and its dependencies.

Yes, you can use CDEs with any language, IDE, or build system. The key is to ensure that your devcontainer.json and .droid.yaml files are correctly configured to support your specific setup. You can run tests, linters, and other tools in the CDE regardless of the language or build system you’re using.

Issue: Encountering “permission denied” errors when running commands in the CDE.

Solution:

1. Check the user permissions in your devcontainer.json.
2. You may need to set the remoteUser as root or adjust file permissions in your Dockerfile.
3. Example fix:

   {
     "remoteUser": "root"
   }
   

Issue: Test commands return empty JUnit XML results.

Solution:

1. Ensure your test command is correctly formatted and includes the necessary flags to generate your test output.
2. Double-check the file paths and package names in your test commands.
3. Example fix for Go tests:

   unit_test_command: "a=$file && package=${a%/*} && go test -v $package | go-junit-report > junit.xml && cat junit.xml"
   

Issue: Encountering “package not found” errors when running tests or coverage commands.

Solution:

1. Ensure you’re running commands from the correct directory.
2. Use relative paths when specifying packages.
3. Example fix for Go tests:

   code_coverage_command: "a=$file && package=${a%/*} && go test -coverprofile=coverage.out ./$package && go run github.com/boumenot/gocover-cobertura@latest < coverage.out"
   

Issue: Droid seems to be using outdated commands despite updates to the configuration files.

Solution:

1. Ensure all changes are merged into the default branch of your repository.
2. Verify that the .droid.yaml file in the default branch contains the updated commands.
3. If issues persist, contact Factory support to check if there’s a caching issue on their end.