Triggering Dispatch pipelines using ChatOps

Prerequisites

This tutorial assumes that you followed the steps on following pages:

• Dispatch Installation
• Setting up a Repository in Dispatch
• Checked out the “hello-world” repository on your laptop
• Configured the “hello-world” application for Dispatch CI (via dispatch ci repository create)

Introduction

In this tutorial, a task test will be triggered by defining and using a ChatOps command /test

Configure ChatOps Trigger in Dispatchfile

To use the ChatOps feature, you must include a ChatOps action to trigger when a chat event occurs. As an example, we will examine a task written in Starlark from the pipeline configuration docs

#!mesosphere/dispatch-starlark:v0.5

load("github.com/mesosphere/dispatch-catalog/starlark/stable/pipeline@0.0.3", "gitResource")

gitResource("src-git")

task("test", inputs = ["src-git"], steps = [k8s.corev1.Container(
    name = "test",
    image = "golang:1.15.7-buster",
    command = [ "go", "test", "./..." ],
    workingDir = "/workspace/src-git",
    resources = k8s.corev1.ResourceRequirements(
        limits = {
            "cpu": k8s.resource_quantity("1000m"),
            "memory": k8s.resource_quantity("8Gi")
        }
    )
)])

action(tasks = ["test"], on = push(branches = ["master"]))
action(tasks = ["test"], on = pullRequest(chatops = ["test"]))

The following action:

action(tasks = ["test"], on = pullRequest(chatops = ["test"]))

runs the task test when there is a pull request when commented with /test. However, you can trigger the task with any word trailing a slash (/) for more details refer the configuration reference.

1. Configure the tests to run in verbose mode, to enable viewing logs as the tests execute. Start by creating a new branch on the hello-world repo:

git checkout -b verbose-tests

2. Make the change to the test task by changing the command to the following:

command = [ "go", "test", "-v", "./..." ],

3. Add, commit, and push the changes to the Git repository.

git add Dispatchfile
git commit -m "Makes tests more verbose"
git push origin verbose-tests

4. Open a Pull Request on GitHub. If you are unfamiliar, refer to the following documentation on GitHub

5. Trigger a test by commenting /test on our Pull Request. To view the run, navigate to your Dispatch dashboard.