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Alloy Development and Maintenance Guide📜

To upgrade the Alloy Package📜

[!IMPORTANT] Please note that Alloy renovate updates will be unique compared to other BigBang renovate updates because Alloy is a wrapper package

  1. Navigate to the upstream chart repo and folder and find the tag that corresponds with the new chart version for this update.

  2. Checkout the renovate/ironbank branch

  3. Modify the version in Chart.yaml and append -bb.0 to the chart version from upstream.

  4. Make sure the annotations, bigbang.dev/applicationVersions: | alloy version is consistent with what is in helm.sh/images: |.

  5. Update the ./chart/values.yaml file alloy.image.tag and alloy.configReloader.image.tag values to match their respective tags in helm.sh/images: in ./chart/Chart.yaml

  6. Update dependencies and binaries using helm dependency update ./chart

    • If needed, log into registry1.
    # Note, if you are using Ubuntu on WSL and get an error about storing credentials or about how `The name org.freedesktop.secrets was not
# provided by any .service files` when you run the command below, install the libsecret-1-dev and gnome-keyring packages. After doing this,
# you'll be prompted to set a keyring password the first time you run this command.
#
helm registry login https://registry1.dso.mil -u ${registry1.username}
    • Pull assets and commit the binaries as well as the Chart.lock file that was generated.
    # Note: You may need to resolve merge conflicts in chart/values.yaml before these commands work. Refer to the "Modifications made to upstream"
# section below for hinsts on how to resolve them. Also, you need to be logged in to registry1 thorough docker.
helm dependency update ./chart

    Then log out.

    helm registry logout https://registry1.dso.mil

  7. Update CHANGELOG.md adding an entry for the new version and noting all changes in a list (at minimum should include - Updated <chart or dependency> to x.x.x).

  8. Generate the README.md updates by following the guide in gluon.

  9. Push up your changes, add upgrade notices if applicable, validate that CI passes.

    • If there are any failures, follow the information in the pipeline to make the necessary updates.

    • Add the debug label to the MR for more detailed information.

    • Reach out to the CODEOWNERS if needed.

  10. As part of your MR that modifies bigbang packages, you should modify the bigbang bigbang/tests/test-values.yaml against your branch for the CI/CD MR testing by enabling your packages.

    • To do this, at a minimum, you will need to follow the instructions at bigbang/docs/developer/test-package-against-bb.md with changes for Alloy enabled (the below is a reference, actual changes could be more depending on what changes where made to Alloy in the package MR).

test-values.yaml📜

  alloy:
    enabled: true
    git:
      tag: null
      branch: <my-package-branch-that-needs-testing>
    values:
      istio:
        hardened:
          enabled: true
    ### Additional compononents of Loki should be changed to reflect testing changes introduced in the package MR
  1. Follow the Testing new Alloy Version section of this document for manual testing.

Update main chart📜

chart/Chart.yaml📜

  • update k8s-monitoring version and appVersion
  • Ensure Big Bang version suffix is appended to chart version
  • Ensure gluon dependencies are present and up to date
  apiVersion: v2
  name: k8s-monitoring
  description: A Helm chart for gathering, scraping, and forwarding Kubernetes telemetry data to a Grafana Stack.
  type: application
  version: $VERSION-bb.0
  appVersion: $K8S_MONITORING_APPVERSION
  icon: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grafana/grafana/main/public/img/grafana_icon.svg
  sources:
    - https://github.com/grafana/k8s-monitoring-helm/tree/main/charts/k8s-monitoring
  annotations:
    bigbang.dev/applicationVersions: |
      - Alloy: '$ALLOY_APP_VERSION'
      - k8s-monitoring: '$K8S_MONITORING_VERSION'
    helm.sh/images: |
      - name: alloy
        image: registry1.dso.mil/ironbank/opensource/grafana/alloy:$ALLOY_APP_VERSION
      - name: configmap-reload
        image: registry1.dso.mil/ironbank/opensource/jimmidyson/configmap-reload:$CONFIGMAP_RELOAD_APP_VERSION
    bigbang.dev/upstreamReleaseNotesMarkdown: |
      - [Find our upstream chart's CHANGELOG here](https://github.com/grafana/k8s-monitoring-helm/releases/)
      - [and our upstream application release notes here](https://github.com/grafana/alloy/blob/main/docs/sources/release-notes.md?plain=1)
  dependencies:
    - name: k8s-monitoring
      version: "1.5.0"
      repository: https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts
    - name: gluon
      version: "$GLUON_VERSION"
      repository: oci://registry1.dso.mil/bigbang

Modifications made to upstream📜

This is a high-level list of modifications that Big Bang has made to the upstream helm chart. You can use this as as cross-check to make sure that no modifications were lost during the upgrade process.

chart/values.yaml📜

  • Ensure istio defaults are set
istio:
  enabled: false
  namespace: istio-system
  hardened:
    enabled: false

Testing new Alloy Version📜

NOTE: For these testing steps it is good to do them on both a clean install and an upgrade. For clean install, point Alloy to your branch. For an upgrade do an install with Alloy pointing to the latest tag, then perform a helm upgrade with Alloy pointing to your branch.

Deploy Alloy as a part of BigBang📜

You will want to install with:

  • Istio package enabled

overrides/alloy.yaml

domain: dev.bigbang.mil

flux:
  interval: 1m
  rollback:
    cleanupOnFail: false

istio:
  enabled: true

addons:
  alloy:
    # git:
    #   tag: null
    #   branch: "<branch-name>"
    enabled: true
  • Validate Alloy pod logs are showing no errors.

When in doubt with any testing or upgrade steps, reach out to the CODEOWNERS for assistance.