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Skillsupdate-ci-images

update-ci-images

Design & creation

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Updated 10-16 03:44

About this skill

Update all CI images

Rebuild every CI image at a single new tag with a new Node.js version, driving the existing workflow_dispatch build workflows from a PR branch and babysitting the runs until they all pass.

Inputs

Parse from the user's invocation (ask only if missing):

  • tag (required) — the Docker tag every image gets, e.g. 2025.06.0.
  • node version (required) — full Node version, e.g. 22.22.1 (must exist at https://nodejs.org/dist/v<version>/ for both x64 and arm64).
  • concurrency N (optional, default 4) — max build jobs in flight at once.

The job matrix — 6 builds total

Workflow Variants
ci-images-build-os.yml os in {ubuntu24_04, rocky_8, debian, openSUSE15_6, SLES15_6} = 5
ci-images-build-postgres.yml postgres = 1

Each workflow run builds both architectures (amd64 + arm64) as a matrix on native runners and then merges them into a single multi-arch manifest list, e.g. ghcr.io/<owner>/positron-ubuntu24:<tag>, positron-postgres:<tag>. There is one run (one dispatch) per image, not per architecture. The per-arch tags (positron-ubuntu24-amd64:<tag>, positron-ubuntu24-arm64:<tag>, …) are still pushed as build outputs and left in place for the transition — the manifest list is assembled from them by the workflow's merge job. Postgres has no Node and gets no NODE_VERSION change.

<dir> of this skill below means .claude/skills/update-ci-images.

Phase 0 — Preflight

Run and confirm all pass before changing anything:

gh auth status                       # authenticated, has workflow + repo scope
git -C "$REPO" status --porcelain     # MUST be empty (clean tree)
git -C "$REPO" rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD   # report the base branch (any is fine)
gh repo view --json nameWithOwner -q .nameWithOwner   # expect posit-dev/positron
  • Verify the Node version exists for both arches (HEAD request is enough): curl -sfI https://nodejs.org/dist/v<node>/node-v<node>-linux-x64.tar.xz and ...-linux-arm64.tar.xz. If either 404s, stop and tell the user the version is bad.
  • The tree MUST be clean — if dirty, stop and ask how to proceed.
  • The base branch does not have to be main. The update-images/<tag> branch forks from wherever you are, which is fine for testing off a feature branch. Just report which base branch you're forking from (and note it in the PR body) so it's not a surprise.

Phase 1 — Branch, bump, PR

git -C "$REPO" switch -c update-images/<tag>          # sanitize <tag>: non-alnum -> '-'
bash <dir>/scripts/bump-node-version.sh <node>        # edits all 10 compose files, prints proof
# NB: the R PPM snapshot pin is a SEPARATE knob (PPM_SNAPSHOT arg, bumped by
# scripts/bump-ppm-snapshot.sh) and is NOT changed on a normal Node rebuild.
# See the "PPM latest publish-window race" note in Phase 4 before touching it.
git -C "$REPO" add -A
git -C "$REPO" commit -m "Bump Node to <node> and rebuild all images at <tag>"
git -C "$REPO" push -u origin HEAD
gh pr create --base main --head update-images/<tag> \
  --title "Rebuild all CI images at <tag> (Node <node>)" \
  --body  "<see template below>"

PR body template — fill the checklist; you will tick boxes as builds go green:

Rebuilds every image at tag `<tag>` with Node `<node>`.

Driven by the `update-ci-images` skill. Builds are dispatched on this branch
via workflow_dispatch with max <N> jobs in flight.

### Builds (each is a multi-arch amd64+arm64 manifest)
- [ ] ubuntu24_04
- [ ] rocky_8
- [ ] debian
- [ ] openSUSE15_6
- [ ] SLES15_6
- [ ] postgres

Commit the end-of-message PR/commit trailer convention used in this repo.

Updating the PR body/checklist: use the REST API, not gh pr edit. gh pr edit --body can fail with a Projects-classic GraphQL deprecation error and silently leave the body unchanged, so use the REST PATCH which is unaffected:

gh api -X PATCH repos/<owner>/<repo>/pulls/<n> -f body="$NEW_BODY"

Rebuild the full body text (with the updated checkboxes) and PATCH it each time.

Phase 2 — Build the queue and state

Create a state file in the scratchpad to survive the long run. Track every job as queued → running (with its run id) → done/failed. Keep two independent per-job counters (see Phase 4 for why):

  • fix_attempts — times a real code fix was made and the job re-dispatched.
  • transient_retries — times the job was re-dispatched for an infra flake (no code change).

Use a TodoWrite list mirroring the 6 jobs so progress is visible.

The 6 jobs (name them like the checklist rows). For each you'll call dispatch-job.sh <branch> <tag> [os] — pass os for the 5 OS jobs, omit it for the postgres job. Each job dispatches one run that builds both arches and merges them into a manifest list.

Phase 3 — Dispatch + monitor loop (the long-running part)

Maintain in_flight (run id → job) and queued. Loop until queued is empty and in_flight is empty:

  1. Refill: while len(in_flight) < N and queued non-empty, pop a job and:

    id=$(bash <dir>/scripts/dispatch-job.sh <branch> <tag> [os])

    Record id, mark the job running, increment its attempts. Update the state file.

  2. Wait: launch the waiter in the background so it doesn't block the session, passing every in-flight run id (poll every 60s). On macOS wrap it in caffeinate -i so the host doesn't idle-sleep mid-run (the builds run on GitHub, but if the host sleeps this poll loop stalls and you won't get re-invoked until it wakes):

    # macOS: prevent idle sleep while waiting. (Linux: drop caffeinate, or use
# `systemd-inhibit --what=idle`.) NB: caffeinate -i does NOT stop lid-close
# sleep on battery — only idle sleep.
WAIT="bash <dir>/scripts/wait-for-runs.sh 60 <id1> <id2> ..."
if [ "$(uname)" = "Darwin" ]; then caffeinate -i $WAIT; else $WAIT; fi

    It exits and prints <id> <conclusion> lines as soon as any in-flight run completes; the harness re-invokes you with that output.

  3. Handle completions for each printed line:

    • success → mark job done, remove from in_flight, tick its PR checklist box (via gh api -X PATCH, see Phase 1 note) and TodoWrite item. Go back to step 1 to refill.
    • anything else (failure/cancelled/timed_out/startup_failure) → go to Phase 4.

  4. When queued and in_flight are both empty → Phase 5.

Do not poll with foreground sleep. Use the background waiter (step 2); the harness re-invokes you when it exits. While waiting you may also use the Monitor tool.

Phase 4 — Diagnose, fix, retry a failed build

For a failed run id:

gh run view <id> --log-failed     # the failing step + error

Each run has two build matrix legs (amd64, arm64) plus a merge job. --log-failed shows which leg (arch) failed — use it to pick the right file to edit (the per-arch docker/images/<os>/docker-compose.<arch>.yml or the shared docker/images/<os>/Dockerfile.*). A merge-job failure means a leg didn't push its arch tag (so the leg is the real failure — fix that), or a transient GHCR/imagetools blip (re-dispatch). Re-dispatching rebuilds both arches and re-merges; that's expected.

Classify by the failure signature (the failing step + error), not just the job:

  • Transient (runner lost, network blip, GHCR 5xx, "no space left", setup-qemu flakes, a CTAN/mirror fetch failure, even a flaky gh call): no code change. Re-dispatch the same job (push not needed), put it back in in_flight, and bump transient_retries (allow up to 5 — flakes are not the job's fault).
  • Real build error (package/repo not found, Node 404 for an arch, Dockerfile/compose problem, a base-image or upstream-package change): edit the relevant file (docker/images/<os>/Dockerfile.*, docker/images/<os>/docker-compose.<arch>.yml, or docker/images/postgres/Dockerfile.postgres), keeping the change minimal and matching surrounding style. Then: 
    git -C "$REPO" add -A
git -C "$REPO" commit -m "Fix <os>/<arch> build: <what>"
git -C "$REPO" push
    Re-dispatch the job on the (now updated) branch, put it back in in_flight, and bump fix_attempts.
  • A Node-version 404 for one arch usually means a bad input — stop and report; don't burn retries.

Counting matters — track per root cause, not per job. A single job can hit several distinct failures in a row (e.g. a real error, then a separate infra flake). Reset/scope the relevant counter to the failure signature so one issue's budget isn't eaten by another.

Stop condition: pause the loop and escalate when, for one job, fix_attempts reaches 3 for the same failure signature (a real fix isn't working), OR transient_retries reaches 5 (persistent flakiness), OR the failure is ambiguous / its fix changes image contents in a way the owner should decide (e.g. pinning package versions). When pausing, report: the job, the failing step, what you tried, and the gh run view <id> --log-failed excerpt. Let other in-flight/queued jobs continue; only the stuck job blocks final success. Don't loop forever.

A fix pushed to the branch only affects builds dispatched after the push. Jobs already in flight keep the old code — that's fine; let them finish and judge them on their own merits.

Known failure patterns (fixes already proven on this repo)

  • R source package needs a newer system lib than the distro ships (e.g. terra 1.9 needs GDAL ≥ 3.7 but Debian bookworm has 3.6.2 → gdal_multidimensional.cpp ... no matching function for ... AsClassicDataset). Fix: pin the dev-deps install to a dated PPM snapshot from before the breaking package version, for that OS's R_REPO/RSPM: https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/<DATE> (source) and https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/__linux__/<distro>/<DATE> (binary). Find the breaking date from https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/<pkg>/. (Rocky takes a different route — it builds newer GEOS/GDAL from source — so this only bites Debian-ish.)
  • PPM latest publish-window race (! Failed to download <pkg> from https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/.../latest/.../<pkg>_<ver>.tar.gz during pak::local_install_dev_deps, after many packages downloaded fine). Root cause: on the rolling latest channel, pak resolves a version from the PACKAGES metadata but the matching binary/source file can already have rotated out of latest mid-publish → an intermittent 404. It looks transient but recurs. Fix: pin the build-time dev-deps install to a dated snapshot (https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/<DATE> source, .../cran/__linux__/<distro>/<DATE> binary), which is internally consistent. Leave each image's runtime .Rprofile/ENV RSPM on latest. The date is the PPM_SNAPSHOT build arg, set per-OS in the docker/images/<os>/docker-compose.*.yml files and consumed by each Dockerfile.*. Bump the four rolling OSes with scripts/bump-ppm-snapshot.sh <DATE>; debian is intentionally excluded (frozen at 2026-03-01 for the terra/GDAL reason above — do not move it with the others). Ref: posit-dev/positron#14613. Changing image contents (package versions) is an owner decision — confirm the date with the user before repinning.
  • TinyTeX / tlmgr intermittent failures (could not get texlive.tlpdb, or install fails after fetching from a random mirror). Root cause: tlmgr option repository https://mirror.ctan.org/... is a round-robin that can land on a stale/unreachable mirror per call. Fix: pin to a single complete mirror (https://ctan.math.illinois.edu/systems/texlive/tlnet) and wrap the network-dependent tlmgr update/install in a small retry loop. Present in all 5 OS Dockerfiles.

Phase 5 — Finish

When all 6 are done (success):

  • Tick all PR checklist boxes (gh api -X PATCH, per the Phase 1 note); add a summary comment (gh pr comment <n> works fine) listing each manifest:tag pushed, e.g. ghcr.io/posit-dev/positron-ubuntu24:<tag> … positron-postgres:<tag> (the per-arch -amd64/-arm64 tags are also pushed as build outputs).
  • Leave the PR open for human review — do NOT merge.
  • Report to the user: the PR URL, the tag, the Node version, and confirmation that all 6 multi-arch images built and pushed. Note anything that needed a fix (link those commits).

If you stopped early on a stuck job, report exactly what's green, what's blocked, and the diagnosis, and leave the branch/PR in place for the user to take over.