Building Kubernetes is easy if you take advantage of the containerized build environment. This document will help guide you through understanding this build process.
## Requirements
1. Docker, using one of the following configurations:
* **macOS** You can either use Docker for Mac or docker-machine. See installation instructions [here](https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/).
**Note**: You will want to set the Docker VM to have at least 4.5GB of initial memory or building will likely fail. (See: [#11852]( http://issue.k8s.io/11852)).
You must install and configure Google Cloud SDK if you want to upload your release to Google Cloud Storage and may safely omit this otherwise.
## Overview
While it is possible to build Kubernetes using a local golang installation, we have a build process that runs in a Docker container. This simplifies initial set up and provides for a very consistent build and test environment.
## Key scripts
The following scripts are found in the `build/` directory. Note that all scripts must be run from the Kubernetes root directory.
*`build/run.sh`: Run a command in a build docker container. Common invocations:
*`build/run.sh make`: Build just linux binaries in the container. Pass options and packages as necessary.
*`build/run.sh make cross`: Build all binaries for all platforms
*`build/run.sh make kubectl KUBE_BUILD_PLATFORMS=darwin/amd64`: Build the specific binary for the specific platform (`kubectl` and `darwin/amd64` respectively in this example)
*`build/run.sh make test-integration`: Run integration test
*`build/run.sh make test-cmd`: Run CLI tests
*`build/copy-output.sh`: This will copy the contents of `_output/dockerized/bin` from the Docker container to the local `_output/dockerized/bin`. It will also copy out specific file patterns that are generated as part of the build process. This is run automatically as part of `build/run.sh`.
*`build/make-clean.sh`: Clean out the contents of `_output`, remove any locally built container images and remove the data container.
The scripts directly under `build/` are used to build and test. They will ensure that the `kube-build` Docker image is built (based on `build/build-image/Dockerfile`) and then execute the appropriate command in that container. These scripts will both ensure that the right data is cached from run to run for incremental builds and will copy the results back out of the container.
The `kube-build` container image is built by first creating a "context" directory in `_output/images/build-image`. It is done there instead of at the root of the Kubernetes repo to minimize the amount of data we need to package up when building the image.
There are 3 different containers instances that are run from this image. The first is a "data" container to store all data that needs to persist across to support incremental builds. Next there is an "rsync" container that is used to transfer data in and out to the data container. Lastly there is a "build" container that is used for actually doing build actions. The data container persists across runs while the rsync and build containers are deleted after each use.
`rsync` is used transparently behind the scenes to efficiently move data in and out of the container. This will use an ephemeral port picked by Docker. You can modify this by setting the `KUBE_RSYNC_PORT` env variable.
All Docker names are suffixed with a hash derived from the file path (to allow concurrent usage on things like CI machines) and a version number. When the version number changes all state is cleared and clean build is started. This allows the build infrastructure to be changed and signal to CI systems that old artifacts need to be deleted.
## Proxy Settings
If you are behind a proxy and you are letting these scripts use `docker-machine` to set up your local VM for you on macOS, you need to export proxy settings for Kubernetes build, the following environment variables should be defined.
Optionally, you can specify addresses of no proxy for Kubernetes build, for example
```
export KUBERNETES_NO_PROXY=127.0.0.1
```
If you are using sudo to make Kubernetes build for example make quick-release, you need run `sudo -E make quick-release` to pass the environment variables.
## Really Remote Docker Engine
It is possible to use a Docker Engine that is running remotely (under your desk or in the cloud). Docker must be configured to connect to that machine and the local rsync port must be forwarded (via SSH or nc) from localhost to the remote machine.
To do this easily with GCE and `docker-machine`, do something like this:
```
# Create the remote docker machine on GCE. This is a pretty beefy machine with SSD disk.